THE BROTHERS VAN EYCK. 445 



slight importance for the history of modern art that "the cele- 

 brated brothers Hubert and Johann van Eyck belonged essen- 

 tially to a school of miniature painters which since the last half 

 of the fourteenth century attained to a high degree of perfection 

 in Flanders."* 



The historical paintings of the brothers van Eyck present 

 us with the first instances of carefully executed landscapes. 

 Neither of them ever visited Italy, but the younger brother, 

 Johann, enjoyed the opportunity of seeing the vegetation of 

 Southern Europe, when in the year 1428 he accompanied the 

 embassy which Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, sent to 

 Lisbon when he sued for the hand of the daughter of King 

 John I. of Portugal. In the Museum of Berlin are preserved 

 the wings of the famous picture which the above-named cele- 

 brated painters the actual founders of the great Flemish 

 school executed for the cathedral at Ghent. On these wings 

 which represent holy hermits and pilgrims, Johann van Eyck 

 has embellished the landscape with orange and date trees 

 and cypresses, which, from their extreme truth to nature, 

 impart a solemn and imposing character to the other dark 

 masses in the picture. One feels, on looking at this painting, 

 that the artist must himself have received the impression of 

 a vegetation fanned by gentle breezes. 



In considering the master- works of the brothers van Eyck 

 we have not advanced beyond the first half of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, when the more highly perfected style of oil-painting, which 

 was only just beginning to replace painting in tempera, had 

 already attained to a high degree of technical perfection. The 

 taste for a vivid representation of natural forms was awakened, 

 and if we would trace the gradual extension and elevation of 

 this feeling for nature, we must bear in mind, that Antonio di 

 Messina, a pupil of the brothers van Eyck,, transplanted the 

 predilection for landscape painting to Venice, and that the 

 pictures of the van Eyck school exercised a similar action in 

 Florence on Domenico Ghirlandaio and other masters.f The 



* Waagen, op. cit., th. i. 1837, s. 59; th. iii. 1839, s. 352-359. [See 

 Lanzi's History of Painting. Bonn's Standard Library, 1847, vol. i., 

 pp. 81-87.] TV. 



+ " Pinturicchio painted rich and well composed landscapes as inde- 

 pendent decorations, in the Belvidere of the Vatican. He appears to 

 have exercised an influence on Raphael, in whose paintings there are 

 many landscape peculiarities which cannot be traced to Perugino. lu 



