potd/2024-01-08
Portrait of Margaret van Eyck is a 1439 oil-on-wood painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck. A portrait of his wife Margaret, it is one of the two latest of van Eyck's surviving paintings, and one of the earliest European artworks to depict a painter's spouse. It was completed when Margaret was around 34 and hung until the early 18th century in the chapel of the guild of painters in Bruges (in present-day Belgium). The work is thought to be a pendant or a diptych panel, with van Eyck himself occupying the other half in either a now lost self-portrait known from records until 1769, or his Portrait of a Man. This portrait of Margaret is now in the collection of the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.Painting credit: Jan van Eyck