What do we exactly know about Jan van Eyck? Very little, to be fair. We have only a few dozen or so pieces from a thousand-piece puzzle. For example, his precise year of birth is not known. We suspect it is around 1390. The Van Eycks most likely come from Maaseik. We know virtually nothing about Jan’s brother Lambert or his sister Margareta, also artists. His other brother, Hubert, dies rather young, while he was working on the Ghent Altarpiece, in Ghent. The Van Eycks indeed moved from Maaseik to the economically flourishing West. Jan works in The Hague for Count Jan van Beieren: he first appears there in the historical sources in 1422. In 1425, he becomes the court painter for the Burgundian Duke, Philip the Good, until his death. Van Eyck travels for Philip to Portugal, and possibly also to Italy and the Holy Land, amongst other places. In 1431, Jan purchases a stone house in Bruges, where around 1433 he marries demoiselle Marguerite, that is Margaretha. In Bruges he opens a studio with employees and receives prestigious assignments from clergymen, members of the nobility and wealthy citizens. After Jan’s death, in 1441, his brother Lambert provides for a tomb in the Saint Donation's Church in Bruges. Margaretha continues to lead the studio for a number of years afterwards. Some twenty works by Jan van Eyck are preserved, primarily from his later years. You can admire roughly half of them here.