The Rest Is History - 271: Belgium: History's Greatest Artist

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

Who is the greatest artist of all time? Join Tom and Dominic as Belgian historian Bart van Loo puts forward the case for the hyper-realistic and highly influential art of early Northern Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. And today we are arriving in the fair land of Belgium and Dominic. We have had one Belgian on The Rest Is History, haven't we? And he is absolutely a fan favourite. Bart van Leeuw, author of a sensational book called The Burgundians. And we have got Bart back.

Bart, thanks so much for joining us. Hello, Dominic and Tom. Nice to be here. Hello, Bart. Lovely to have you. So your book, The Burgundians, for those people who haven't read it, is an absolute feast of a book. And your appearance on our podcast, if anything, was even better because you talked constantly, as I remember, for 60 minutes. Tom and I barely said anything.

No, it was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. But there was one thing at the end of that Burgundian podcast that you were disappointed by, I remember. You said, I haven't talked at all about Flemish art and about Jan van Eyck. So we thought, in this World Cup marathon, as we approach the subject of Belgium, we thought, well, let's do Jan van Eyck with Bart van Leeuwen. But here's the question. Is he Belgian? Is he Belgian? Yes, yes. Before I start, I want to address myself to historical purists, because they would probably argue that Jan van Eyck, the greatest painter in Northern, Western and Central Europe before 1500, is not a real Belgian since Belgium was created in 1830 and he lived, as far as we know, in the 15th century.

Well, here's what I would like to say to them. When we look at the map of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, we see two main powers on the continent, France and the Holy Roman Empire, let's say Germany, to simplify things. And in between, a border that seems to last forever. But then in the course of the 4th and 15th century, we see appear a new state, the Low Countries, the cradle of what later on will become the Netherlands and Belgium, an incredible geopolitical achievement that we owe to the Dukes of Burgundy, who I talked about a year ago in your podcast. And I would like to add this thing, that if the Dukes of Burgundy didn't puzzle together

the low countries at the end of the Middle Ages, we could never have invented Belgium in 1830. Moreover, if we talk about Jan van Eyck, nobody will think the Netherlands. Everybody will think Flemish primitives at the famous schools of painters in Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut. And on the contrary, when we say Vermeer or Rembrandt, everybody will immediately say the Netherlands, 12 points. And indeed, van Eyck was born in current Belgium, probably learns his craftsmanship in current Belgium, and will make his most known masterpieces in Bruges and Ghent, current Belgium.

So I think that in this World Cup of History, I think he can run for Belgium, just under two conditions. If we agree that Jan van Eyck can put on the shirt of the Red Devils, we know that the Bran and Hazard, they need some help. If he does so, we will carefully see to it that he's also wearing a Burgundian captain's band. Yes. Yellow and blue colours of Burgundy, and that on the front

of his shirt, we'll put the unforgettable logo of the Golden Fleece. Yes. So the Golden Fleece, the Golden Fleece is the order created by the habsburgs is that right is the habsburgs on the bank dandy is dominic not the habsburgs i think they're dominic and dominic and tom eminent historians i ask you officially do you agree that under that circumstances jan van eyck can run for Belgium. Yes, absolutely. That's, well, it would ruin this episode if we disagreed, wouldn't it? So, Bart, in the episode you did for us on the Burgundians, you gave us the image of

this spectacularly sophisticated court, full of beauty and glamour and gold and great feasts and a lot of dwarfs, as I remember. Yes. So Van Eyck, he becomes the court painter, is he, to the court of Burgundy? Is that his role? Yes, that's maybe the centre of what I want to say, that he will be the court painter of Philip the Good, and that he, later on I would like to talk about that, that even he played a main role

in those feasts, in those Burgundian banquets. But maybe we can start at the beginning. Yes, let's begin at the beginning. Maybe it's an idea because it's incredibly difficult to talk about somebody who lived in the 15th century. And maybe it's an idea just to travel in his footsteps. And that's not easy. Some of my allegations will be hypothetical.

We are no stranger to hypotheticals. We've had some ludicrous claims made on this podcast before, mainly by Tom, actually, about Costa Rican politics. So, Bart, you have complete freedom. Yes. And at the end, let's say that we will talk about the most emblematic piece of art, the Ghent Altar piece, the Adoration of the Mystic Lamp, the Apotheosis of Medieval Art.

And maybe before we start, listeners, this is just a tip. It could be interesting. From time to time, everybody who is listening, you can pause this podcast and quickly look up the painting i'm talking about and then you come back to the podcast i'm going to do that right now the key thing is you must come back to the podcast i think multitask look at it and listen all right bart off you go let's begin at the beginning our incredibly gifted painter was born in mazag that's the eastern part of current Belgium. And how do we know that?

Well, that's quite interesting. In 1435, he's making a portrait of Cardinal Albergatti. And what is fascinating, we still have his draft, made with a silver pen, which for 21st century eyes has the moral is the same effect, I think, as a pencil. And on his draft, Jan kept a written reminder of the colors he would have to use for certain passages when later on he would begin the real painting. Indications such as as gray with ochre overtones for the hair on Albergatti's head,

or very pale white is purple for the lips. And so on. For instance, for the eyes, I like it a lot. He's talking about a yellowish brown tone around the black of the pupil. And he writes down that there is a bluish glow around the white, and he called the white of the eye itself yellowish. And in making the beautiful definitive portrait of 1438, he clearly did not let his own advice go unhealed.

But what makes it really interesting is by unraveling his scribbled color suggestions from 1435, language historians have concluded that van Eyck, Eyck, if you pronounce him in the English way, must have spoken a Maasland dialect.

And that confirms the theory that the painter was born in Maasland in today's Eastern Belgium. And there is, of course, also his name itself that seems to support this line of reasoning. And that's nice. I like it to see how linguistics and art history can make a beautiful couple. But you criticized, or there was a hint there, that you don't pronounce Van Eyck like we do. Yes, yes. You say Van Eyck, but he's Van Eyck. Van Eyck. Van Eyck.

Van Eyck. All right. Tom, you do it? Van Eyck. That's ridiculous. It's like if you want to pronounce my name, you say Van Loo. It's not nice in English, but you should say Van Loo. Van Loo.

Van Eck, Van Loo. Okay. We've educated ourselves and we will try to do better in future. Yes. All right. So he's from, I don't even want to say it actually. Mazek. And we know that because of the linguistic analysis.

So how does he make his, Do we know about his family? Do we know about his social background? All these kinds of things? Yes, we know a little bit. We know his wife because we have the portrait of his wife. He's still in Bruges. Margaretha Van Eyck. And we know we had a daughter.

But we don't know a lot of things. We found the address of his studio, his atelier in Bruges. And the rest we know about Van Eyck is thanks to the Burgundian accounts, the Burgundian archives, where he's been paid. And it's like that, that we can make ourselves a little idea of what his life should have been. What happens next, we don't know for sure, but specialists agree that in all probability,

he will complete his craftsmanship in Liège, that's today the most important city in Eastern Belgium, just by following the river Meuse, La Meuse, the Maas, to Liège. And some say that he painted the famous, and there you go, listeners, the famous Madonna with Chancellor you go, listeners, the famous Madonna with Chancellor Roland, 1335, in one of the churches of the city. I want to explain that.

What do we see on this painting? In front, we see the second most powerful man in the Duchy, Chancellor Roland, is the prime minister of Philip the Good. He appears in a mink-trimmed gold brocade robe, and he may be kneeling at the preacher, but we see no sense of any humility whatsoever. He's directly, without appealing to a patron saying to mediate, no, he focuses directly on Jesus, and Christ blesses him approvingly from the lap of his holy mother. And in the background, and that's what I want to talk about, we see a beautiful landscape, a kind of fairy tale of landscape

with mountains, churches, palaces beside a mighty river. It looks like what you could see when you are in the church tower of St. Bartholomew of Jerzy. But if you look better, you also see the dome of Utrecht. You see snowy mountaintops we don't have that in belgium it can be liège alone and that's right van naak mixes his memories he's not only the greatest realist of his time i will talk about that later on but he's also a master in sampling faces landscape memories and that makes him really modern, I think.

What I want to say also is that in Corona times, locked up in our lockdowns, I tried to paint that river, that wonderful city, with my daughter. She was six years old. We are no amateurs, of course, but we had plenty of time, so we tried. Thank you, COVID.

Without that violence, I would never, but really never i would have tried to copy van eck she was six years old and i told her that if we zoom in on the boats on that river in the background of the painting that we can see that van eck painted little boat men in it knowing that those boats are not even a centimeter tall, it's incredible. And when I zoomed in on the boats and I saw, and she, my daughter, she saw the boatman, she was flabbergasted, as you will be if you do the same thing for her, for my daughter. Van Eyck will always be the painter of those tiny, teeny, tiny boatmen.

Oh, how wonderful. How wonderful. And just on the thing of Chancellor Roland. So he's painting a great man, a famous man, a powerful man. And this is very Renaissance, isn't it? This is the kind of thing that is going on in Italy, that all the various city states there, the dukes and so on, the doges, they have court painters to glorify them and to glorify their cities. And is that very consciously what um the dukes of burgundy are doing yes it's it was started by philip the good himself and everybody is copying it and so

it's it's it's of course you can say that van eck is the last painter of the middle ages and he's the first painter of the northern renaissance we have to talk about that, the individualism. Well, I think it's coming up when we're following his life. And then we come into a very modern kind of looking at Jan van Eyck. So here's a bridge between medieval art and Renaissance art in much the same way that the Duchy of Burgundy is a bridge between the medieval period and the early modern period. Would that be a fair way to characterize his status as an artist?

Yes, of course. That's completely right. I can say it better than you did. The center of Europe of that time being is Burgundy. And on the center of the court of Philip the Good, you have to see almost as a pal, a mate, someone who's really close to the Duke, you see Jan van Eyck. The first time when we really hear about him is 1425, when suddenly he's working for the Count of Holland in The Hague. And that is interesting because that count was before the Prince-Bishop of Liège.

So, where is he? He discovered Jan van Eyck and probably took him with him to The Hague, but not for a long time because he will be transferred to Flanders. I'd like to reconnect with the football cup metaphors and imagery. He's bought by Philip the Good andode and after long negotiations he will be transferred to another club. From now on he will be playing in the Burgundian league of Philippe

de Goode. So this is like promotion to the biggest club in Europe. It's Real Madrid. It's a top. Manchester City if you want. Wolverhampton Wanderers. Yeah. And he's moving to Lille, that is now the north of France,

but then it is Flanders. And the Duke is so enthusiastic about him. He saw his paintings, he heard about him, and he was rich. He was rich as a sheikh in Qatar, so he bought him and he could have the best painter of his time.

And now he's living... Yes. So what is it about him that makes have the best painter of his time. And now he's living. Yes. So what is it about him that makes him the best? What is it that makes him so appealing to Philip the Good that makes him want to have this transfer with presumably a huge transfer fee as well? Well, if you want to talk about that, do you want me to say it in just one phrase

or do you want me to illustrate it with art? Illustrate it with art, Bart. Educate us. Yes. I also want to say that he's now at the court. I will talk about what is so special, what is so good about Van Eyck. But what we always forget, what we even don't know, is that Jan van Eyck, he what we don't, what we always forget, what we even don't know is that Jan van Eyck, he was much more than a painter. He was an ambassador. He did a lot of things. He traveled for Philip de Goethe. He made a map of the world map for Philip de Goethe. And that's, before talking about his extreme art as modernizing in the history of art, is that I want to say, and we may not forget,

that his most important thing was not his paintings at the time being, for us it is, but at the time being, he was working for the Duke and he was behind the scenery of all those banquets. Is that the one with the mechanical elephant? Yes, for instance, and how the Burgundians dressed hazel grouses in their golden habits, cooked a dozen gigantic eggs in pork bladders. Just one example. They stuffed pork bellies with strings of sausages. So when the pork was thrown to the table, that's what they did,

the belly burst open and the sausages spurped it onto the table like grandiose rosary beds. That's like the Breast is Historyories Christmas lunch with the corruption team. Yes. But next time you think of those banquets, we have to imagine behind the scenery. That is amazing. But also people like Jan van Eyck, artists who came up with the idea of 28 musicians in a gigantic pie, self-moving fake elephants, and lots of heroic tapestry and paintings in the background. So if we think of Jan van Eyck, we think of the Ghent Altarpiece,

but we also should think about those banquets. But he's not just working as a sort of banqueting consultant, is he? He's an ambassador and he's doing secret missions that we don't know about. Is that right? Yes. For instance, he went, we don't really know, but specialists agree that probably he went to Jerusalem to prepare a crusade for Philip the Good, to gain information for the world map he was drawing for Philip the Good, that unfortunately disappeared. And he was also sent to Portugal with other ambassadors to negotiate the marriage between Philip de Goode and Isabella of Portugal. And when the negotiations, they went well, and then he could do his real job, Van Eyck. He made a portrait of Isabella. And then he sent a portrait.

Today, we would send a photographer. Philip de Goode did better. He sent Jan van Eyck. So, Bart, would he have gone to Italy, do you think? Would he have been aware of the artistic developments there? We don't have proof of it, but everybody thinks he did, because he went to Portugal, he went to France. Why should he have been in Italy? Yeah. Yes, probably he would have been there. Should we take a break at this point? And, Bart, when we come back, could we look at what it is exactly about his art that makes him so revolutionary and radical? Maybe we should talk about self-portrait and portraiture.

Yeah. And we should talk about the Ghent Altarpiece. Yeah, that's what we'll do. So we'll do that after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is history we are talking to bart van lo or i should say bart van lo is really talking at us um i think that is uh i know no i say that that is what we want that is absolutely what we want i don't want to hear from tom holland at all in the next 40 minutes or 30

minutes or whatever it is i just want to hear from you. Here's a question for you to kick off. Did Jan van Eyck invent oil painting? No, he didn't. We know that oil painting existed way before. We have proof that it was used by other people. But the craftsmanship of Jan van Eyck, it relies down to his control of all painting. He did introduce improvements to the process and therefore he can be seen as one of the originators. And now it's a little bit technical and I'm not that kind of specialist, but it's interesting to know that what changed is that suddenly painters, they use linseed oil instead of egg yolk as a medium.

And that enables painters to impart far more shimmering quality to their colors than they had ever had done before. And van Eyck is experimenting with adding secretives. That's a chemical melange of metals, which made the oil paint dry more quickly. And then it gives him the possibility. He was able to superimpose transparent layers of paint in an innovative way. And as a result, he succeeded in creating the illusion of real death and in giving more luster to the colors. The blue sky are more luminous than ever. The grass was greener and the gold was no longer the shiny effect that his predecessors had achieved by using gold leaf. His gold looked like real gold. So Bart, part of what makes him revolutionary then is this technical ability he has. He's going down deep into the kind of the chemistry of the paint, coming up with a bit like Leonardo does later, I suppose, but obviously to better effect because his paint hasn't kind of flaked and fallen away.

But what about the way that he's then using this paint? Are there things, aspects about the paintings themselves, the images that are on the canvas or on the wall or whatever that is radical and new? Yes, of course. I would like to talk about two things, portrait and then the Ghent altarpiece. Okay. The portrait, we talked about the portrait of Isabella of Portugal, but we also have the portrait of a man in red turban.

And that is believed to be one of the first self-portraits in history, we better say, I think the oldest preserved work of this kind. And talking about portraits, there are several known examples of portraits, and I think Tom can explain it far better than me, but there are a lot of examples of portraits from antiquity. But the practice practically vanished with the emergence of Christianity, which maintained a long and troubled relationship with human representations in general and representations of Christ in particular. And it wasn't until the 14th century that an

art of portraiture developed that was worthy of the name, often used in connection with Marius' negotiations of simply to keep dead or imprisoned prints symbolically alive, present. And labeling Van Eyck as the grandmaster of portrait is a truth difficult to dispute, but we cannot see him as an artistic extraterrestrial. He's not the ET of art history. And often we think about him as the ET of art history, as somebody who simply fell out of the sky. And that is an exaggeration.

Even on basis of the few available examples, it is obvious that he is following in the footsteps of Burgundian painters such as Marlwall and Broederlam. But he outshone them with his eye for detail, the incidence of light from an unseen source, etc. And look at that man in red turban. And you have to go to the National Gallery in London.

You see the hat and the turban stand out in sharp detail while the background is black. Vastly different for the rather flat and stylized faces of Grudelam and Marlwall. It's incredible. It's still astonishing. It's three-dimensional. I'm looking at it now. It is genuinely, it feels three-dimensional in a way that his predecessors don't at all. His mastery of kind of shadow and texture.

And yeah, I'm not an art critic, so I don't have the vocabulary. That was really good, Dominic. That was really good, Dominic. That was really good. But just thinking about another, possibly even more famous painting by Van Eyck in the National Gallery in London, which is probably the painting by him that will be most familiar to British listeners because it's in London, is the Arnolfini portrait, which shows a kind of a merchant and his wife. So the paintings you've been talking about up till now have been either Van Eyck himself or people from the very upper echelons of society, prime ministers and princesses and whatever. But this presumably is a lower social class. But it's somebody with a lot of money and he wants to imitate the Duke, wants to imitate Roland. And that's the kind of thing that is happening. People who have money want themselves on a painting. And that is quite new. And this is something that is really distinctive about the

whole of the lowlands. It's this kind of bourgeois, rising, proto-capitalist society that will become the great motor of what becomes capitalism into the 16th and 17th centuries. And the portraits of Arnolfini and Rollin and others, they were fully consistent with the greater picture of growing individualism. The fact that the painter was all too eager to warm himself at this gently building bonfire of divinities. It could be seen also in his so-called self-portrait, but also in the completion of the Arnolfino portrait. When you are before that portrait in the National Gallery,

you see that right in the middle of that work, he wrote literally, Johannes de Eick, Fwitt, Hick, Jan van Eyck was here. And in the mirror, hanging beneath that inscription, we can just make out his own silhouette. Yeah, that's the remarkable thing about it, isn't it? So the art critic Ernst Gombrich, he said that it's one of the great revolutionary works of art. A simple corner of the real world had suddenly been fixed onto a panel

as if by magic. For the first time in history, the artist became the perfect eyewitness in the truest sense of the term. And that's what you're saying. He is present in the painting in a way that an artist had never really been present in a painting before. Yes, present. And he is the first artist we know who put his name on his panels, on his paintings. He just put his name or a slogan, something like,

Als ich kam, which means that he completed this work as well as I'm able, given my devotion and ability. That's a sardonic quip from an artist who knew perfectly well what he was capable of. He wrote his name at the bottom of the frame.

And also the Ghent Altarpiece contains a clear reference to Jan van Eyck. Just before we go to the Ghent Altarpiece, you said he wasn't E.T. He didn't fall from the sky. So that putting himself into the painting and that sort of sense of a move to –'m not i'm trying to i'm still groping for my art criticism terminology so so this sort of sense that he is an eyewitness looking at a particular scene and that his individual it's you know it's his individual viewpoint that we are seeing rather than some sort of abstract sort of absolute dehumanized vision. Is that coming out of the kind of, is that a, you know, is he reflecting a kind of humanism and an individualism of his time or is that unique to

him? No, it is happening, but he's very, he's the most extravagant example of it. But we also have, for instance, the Dukes of Burgundy, somebody like Philip the Bold, the first Duke of Burgundy. He will put a statue of himself at the entrance of his church in Dijon, Chamonix. It's completely new. And the monks in Cluny, when they made, Tom will know that better than me, when they made a statue of God or Christ, they were afraid that there was thunder coming from the skies. They were hiding in somewhere where they could hide, but nothing happened. God didn't do anything.

So people went on, and then at the end of the fourth and beginning of the 15th century, things are changing. And in what is changing everywhere, you could say there's something in the water. We cannot explain it. Maybe Tom can explain it. Van Eyck is on the top of it. He's saying, here I am. I'm putting my name and that's what's happening now. So he's clearly reflecting the spirit of the age. He's reflecting the spirit that is the court of the Burgundian dukes, but also this rising merchant class. However, if we look at the painting that we're going to close with, the Ghent altarpiece, this great altarpiece in the church in Ghent, talk us through that. To what extent is that? Because this, in a way, does seem to me to be looking

backwards at least as much as forwards. I may have that wrong. So if you're listening to this podcast and you are able to call it up on your phone or wherever you are, do. But just for those who can't, could you give a description of the altarpiece? No, it's impossible. It's impossible. How could you? The first thing we have to imagine is that this altarpiece is closed. Let's close it.

It's closed. And let's imagine we are there in Ghent, in the old church of St. John, which was renamed the St. Bavo Cathedral in the 16th century. We are there. It is 6 May 1432. And we are there for the installation of the Ghent Altarpiece. A masterpiece of European art. Moreover, one of the world's

treasures. We have the David sculpture of Michelangelo. We have the Mona Lisa of Da Vinci. We have the Night Watch of Rembrandt. And we have the Ghent Altarpiece. It's a must. An artistic landmark almost beyond comparison. And let's imagine Philip the Good is there too, with his

wife, Isabella of Portugal. And we see also two other people, very important, Jos Veth and Elizabeth Berlut. I have to mention them because without them, we wouldn't have had this masterpiece. And they are the person who commissioned and paid for this polyptych altarpiece. They remained childless and there was no one to carry the family name forward. But thanks to this altarpiece, they will go on in history. Even they are sure that exactly 590 years later, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook will learn about them on the Rest is History podcast. In short, they know they can die in peace. And we have still,

before the closed altarpiece, we have also to imagine Jan van Eyck himself prominently in view, somewhere between Jos Veth and Philip de Goed, the artist as a bridge builder between the elites of his age. And there we are in the Veth Chapel in builder between the elites of his age. And there we are in the VAT chapel in front of the closed altar piece. We see the back panels. And why is it closed?

That is what the faithful, the believers see on normal days. It's only opened on Sundays and holidays. And yes, we are there too. Let's say we are a fly on the shoulders of Commissioner Josveit and all we can think of is this. If that and his wife Burlut wore the same clothes as the portals made by Van Eyck for the back panels, that is what we are looking at now, they would have sworn that the two of them were standing in front of a mirror. Van Eyck is realistic to the bone. Jos Vat, he can count his double, triple chins

and all his warts. And of course, I talk about it. This portrait of the patron is also consistent with this greater picture of growing individualism. But let's now open again Altarpiece. Let's open it quickly. It's gleaming, shining in the middle. The mystic lamp symbolizing the sacrifice of Jesus, of course, but also we see a sheep in the end of the late Middle Ages, thanks to the cloth weaving industry, thanks to the wool of English sheep. Jan was not only into religious symbolism when he put the sheep in the center of this painting.

And there is more. I imagine that seeing this must have made Philip the Good reach for his chest in an involuntary reflex, seeing a reflection of the golden ram he wore around his neck. Yes, of course. In the image of the sheep, the emblem of the golden fleece. Isn't that wonderful? That puts lots of layers in his work. And of course, I'm not going to give a theological interpretation of the work of who we'll still be talking tomorrow. But, I mean, that's just one of the many images on the altarpiece, isn't it?

I mean, you've got all these biblical characters. You have knights. You have, I don't know, a crowd of worshippers. You have somebody playing an organ or some musical instrument. Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve. And it is, I mean, people should Google it and be looking at it now. It is incredibly realistic, but it is also sumptuous, kind of technicolor.

I mean, have you been to Ghent Cathedral, Tom? I have, yes. I mean, when you see it in the flesh, it's an amazing, amazing piece of work. Yes, you talk about Adam, and that reminds me of something. When you see Adam, that's on the back channel, but that's not important. But when you look at him, particularly at his hair, it looks as if we can see, as if we can touch every single hair. But that is not true. Van Eyck, of course, did not paint paint every single hair but it gives us the illusion that he did so and that is the magic of Jan van Eyck so but what's going on here what does all this mean so it's God the Virgin John the Baptist there's a lot of Holy Spirit action going on

what else is happening yes but no but no, but that is, it's, it's, it's impossible to talk about it. There are so many details you could talk about. That detail reminds that place in Gant or in Bruges, that detail. We can,

if we can, the angels who are singing, they are, they are looking at the book and you can read what they are singing. Yeah. It's incredible. When you see a book closed, you see there is a note in it. The book is closed, but I imagine that if we could,

with some technology, take the note in the book, we could take it out. Jan van Eyck, I'm sure he has written something on it. That is the idea you get when you're in front of the Ghent Altarpiece. When it is opened in what, 1432, did you say, Bart? 1432, it's 519 years ago. Is that pretty much the peak of Ghent's kind of power and influence? Yes, Ghent was big in the 13th century, in the 14th century, in the 15th century. But at that moment being, it's the biggest city in Northern Europe. Of course, there is Paris, but Ghent is almost up to 70, maybe 80,000 people.

That's huge because in 1350 in Amsterdam, there were only a thousand people in maybe three, four, five000 at the moment when the Ghent Altarpiece was opened. Everything is happening in Flanders, in Ghent, in Bruges. And that's where we see the Duke, where we see the Dutchers, where we see Jos Vat and Jan van Eyck in front of this masterpiece. It's a classic example of how the generation of wealth generates art. People become rich, they can afford to pay brilliant artists. And so in a way, this is a monument not just to a kind of cultural highlight, but an age of political and economic power, which of course is what your great book about the Burgundians is all about. Yes, it is. And people today, what strikes them when they are before van Eyck is the details, the realism. Did you know that there is another painting, The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Palen,

that Einstein, as the doctors who studied that painting, that they are able today to diagnose the clergyman's arteriosclerosis. Wow. And just how fascinated the group of Burgundians must have been in 1432 as they gazed at the Ghent altarpiece. They'd probably never beheld such flagrant realism before. Well, that's it, isn't it? It's the combination of the sort of theological complexity

with the same realism that he's bringing to men with blue hats or men with red hats or all the portraits that he has previously been painting. And that, I guess, is something new because people had not attempted to bring realism into sort of religious art because the whole point of religious art was that it wasn't meant to be realistic. So it is because I always ask myself, technically, there must have been someone in the 13th century who would have more or less could have done what did Van Eyck. But why did we have to wait till that moment?

That is what you're talking about, that things are changing. And suddenly, with science going on, with the growth of individualism of the ego, and with the lots of money that we have in Burgundy, in Ghent and Bruges, we can make this kind of art. Just before we go, one last question. When you cheer Belgium on in the World Cup, do you secretly wish that there was a Burgundian team? Ah, yes, because it would be great. Imagine that we would have a Burgundian team

that would make the Netherlands and Belgium together. I don't know, we would have won three or four World Cups. We would have beaten the Argentines in 78. We would have beaten the Spanish, where was it, 20 years ago. And imagine the opening ceremony that he would have designed, Van Eyck would have designed. Loads of elephants, sausages everywhere. It would have been brilliant. You'd have given the Dutch some much needed backbone to stop them crumbling in World Cup finals, Bart. That's what you'd have done.

Yes, that would be great. It would be great. We would be a great power in Europe. But let's just, just before we say goodbye, Jan van Eyck, he dies in 1441 in Bruges. And is there a sense then when he dies that Burgundy has lost one of the great figures in European cultural history? Yes, that is there because he was an example. There are other great painters coming on.

His successor on the Burgundian court is someone like Rogier van der Weyden. You could also do a podcast on him. I think we would be too tempted to call him Roger van der Weyden so that people in England knew who he was. How did you say it again? Rogier van der Weyden. And that is interesting because he was Roger de la Pasteur. He had a name in French, but because of the Burgundian Flemish court,

he translated his name in Dutch. We need more of this linguistic education, Tom, don't you think? We do. Yes, we do. And there's been a lot of butchering of languages in the Brest's history. And it's good that someone's come on to put us right, especially over this um world cup uh sweep can i give the last tip to to to the listeners of course not everybody can go to again not everybody can go to london to see arnold feeney to the louvre to the for the madonna with chancellor roland which is in restoration right now i cannot wait

to see the results and the g Ghent altarpiece has been restored and it's magnificent. When we are now in front of the Ghent altarpiece, we can see it with the eyes of Van Eyck and Philip de Goethe. It's the same colors as 600 years ago. But what I want to say is there is an incredible solution for this problem.

Listen very carefully. I will say this only once. Go to the website closer to Van Eyck. It's a digital project where you can zoom into the minor details of these masterpieces and yes you can see the teeny tiny boatman on the madonna painting and you don't know what you are seeing it's wonderful and you can only fall in love with jan van eick we have all fallen in love with jan van eck as we fell in love with the court of Burgundy in your previous episode but thanks so much absolute champion of Burgundy

and of course therefore for Belgium thanks very much thanks so much all of you for listening bye bye goodbye thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com.

That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. That's restishistorypod.com.