Hubert van Eyck

Hubert van Eyck was a Flemish painter traditionally believed to have been the elder brother of Jan van Eyck, one of the most important painters in European history. According to a Latin inscription on the Ghent Altarpiece (the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb), Hubert began the work and Jan completed it after Hubert's death in 1426. However, the nature and extent of Hubert's contribution to the altarpiece, and indeed his very existence as an independent artist, has been one of the most debated questions in art history.

If the traditional account is accurate, Hubert van Eyck was born in or near Maaseik in the Bishopric of Liège around 1385-1390. He would have been the senior member of the Van Eyck workshop and possibly the initial designer of the Ghent Altarpiece, the single most important painting of the Northern Renaissance. The inscription describes him as "the greatest painter who ever lived," though this assessment may reflect local pride rather than universal judgment.

Hubert died on September 18, 1426, and was buried in the crypt of St. Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, where the altarpiece stands.

The attribution of specific stylistic qualities to Hubert van Eyck as distinct from Jan is extremely problematic, since no independently documented works by Hubert survive. If he was indeed responsible for the initial design and some of the painting of the Ghent Altarpiece, his style would have shared the characteristics of early Netherlandish painting at its most ambitious: meticulous naturalistic detail, luminous oil painting technique, and a revolutionary approach to the representation of light and space.

Scholarly attempts to distinguish Hubert's hand from Jan's in the Ghent Altarpiece have identified certain panels as potentially earlier or more archaic in style, but consensus remains elusive.

The question of Hubert van Eyck is one of the great mysteries of art history. If the inscription on the Ghent Altarpiece is accurate, Hubert was one of the founders of the Netherlandish painting revolution that transformed European art. The Ghent Altarpiece itself is one of the most important paintings in the history of Western civilization, and Hubert's role in its creation — however debated — places him at a crucial moment in artistic history.

The "Hubert problem" has generated an enormous scholarly literature and continues to be debated by art historians, making it one of the most productive questions in the discipline.