Jan van Eyck Quotes and Inscriptions

Jan van Eyck’s words and inscriptions

The most reliable short phrases associated with Jan van Eyck belong to particular pictures. They include his motto, statements of authorship, dates, a woman's account of her painted likeness and words drawn from the Bible. They do not all have the same speaker. Reading them as a single collection of the painter's personal sayings would erase some of his most inventive uses of language.^[1][6][10]

A useful quotation therefore needs more than Van Eyck's name beneath it. It needs an object, a location on that object and a clear distinction between original wording and modern translation. The examples below explain what can be quoted, what the words establish and where interpretation begins. Their interest lies in the way writing works with the image: as an apparent carving, a conspicuous flourish on a wall, an exchange of speech or a memory made visible.

Als Ich Can: the motto and its changing English sense

Als Ich Can is the phrase most readily described as Van Eyck's own motto. On the upper original frame of London's Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?), it is rendered in Greek-looking characters. The National Gallery explains both an abbreviated Flemish saying and a sound-play connecting the first person with Eyck's name. “As I can” is a useful short translation; “as best I can” conveys an English sense rather than reproducing every feature of the original.^[1]

Its use was not confined to that possible self-portrait. KMSKA's small Madonna at the Fountain, dated 1439, retains a marbled wooden frame with the motto and a separate statement of making and completion. The museum connects the shortened device with a fuller formula contrasting what someone can achieve with what they would wish to achieve. The extra qualification explains the saying; it should not silently become a longer sentence supposedly written in full on every painting.^[2]

The distinction between language and lettering also matters. In his Dutch study of 1955, Leo van Puyvelde discussed the mixture of Greek and Latin letterforms used to spell the motto. A Greek-looking alphabet does not make its words a Greek sentence. His essay also considered competing interpretations of the phrase and its dialect, illustrating how much linguistic argument can sit behind a translation of only three words. Its historical attributions and assumptions need checking against present collection records.^[3]

A dated maker's statement is not a sitter's name

Below the London portrait, a separate Latin inscription identifies Van Eyck as maker and supplies 21 October 1433. The formula me fecit makes the object say that someone “made me”. That grammatical speaker is different from a person making an autobiographical remark. The National Gallery regards the face as very probably the artist's, but the dated maker statement alone does not identify the man portrayed. Its original frame also preserves the practical business of lettering: the final part of the date is compressed as space runs short.^[1]

These distinctions keep the motto useful. It can be quoted with confidence as an artistic device without making every possible reading of the sitter equally certain. Nor must its modest-sounding English be treated as a complete psychological portrait. Repetition across different kinds of work gives the phrase a public role: it accompanies pictures made for viewers, rather than surviving as a private note about how the painter felt on a particular day.^[1][2]

Johannes de eyck fuit hic: presence in the Arnolfini room

The conspicuous inscription above the mirror in the Arnolfini Portrait reads Johannes de eyck fuit hic, with the year 1434. “Jan van Eyck was here” and “Jan van Eyck has been here” are familiar English renderings of that statement. Here the artist's name occupies the pictured wall, rather than a strip outside the scene. Its flourishes and position make writing a significant feature of the room.^[4][5]

Lorne Campbell's National Gallery catalogue explains why this cannot simply be translated into a wedding certificate. The formula fuit hic occurs in graffiti; the wording used to name witnesses in contemporary legal documents was different. The inscription gives neither an exact day nor the name of a second witness. Campbell's argument addresses the old legal-attestation interpretation specifically. It does not require us to ignore the inscription's unusual claim of presence.^[4]

The mirror strengthens that claim without resolving it. Two further figures appear at the threshold in its reflection. The Gallery raises the possibility that Van Eyck is among them, but leaves it as a possibility. Its present account also qualifies the identification of the couple and no longer treats a marriage ceremony as established. The wording on the wall is visible evidence; deciding who is reflected, what event is shown and how literally the room records a real interior involves additional arguments.^[5]

For quotation, retain the actual statement of presence. Adding that the painter “witnessed this wedding” would turn an interpretation into words he did not write there. The inscription remains striking without that addition: the represented household displays the painter's name almost as openly as its owners display their possessions.

Margareta's frame: whose husband, whose voice?

The Portrait of Margareta van Eyck in Bruges speaks through its frame. The Latin opening refers to “my husband Johannes” completing the likeness in 1439; the lower text gives the speaker's age as thirty-three. Musea Brugge reads the precise day as 15 June. The text identifies the artist through a relationship to the portrayed woman, while his motto appears as another element of the framing words.^[6]

The first person is integral to the design. It allows the woman to address a viewer across the boundary between painted face and surrounding frame. It does not preserve a conversation with Margareta or establish that she composed the inscription. Even her personal name is supplied by the picture's identification rather than spelled out in that opening. A quotation entry should describe it as wording on her portrait, rather than placing the sentence in Jan's mouth.^[6]

Conservation research makes this case especially instructive. Jill Dunkerton and her collaborators describe bands whose lighting suggests inset, indented lettering, within mouldings painted to resemble marble. Their account considers tooled leather as one possible intended material for the bands; it does not identify actual leather applied to the frame. Words that look physically cut or mounted are themselves part of Van Eyck's painted illusion.^[7]

The same study records the date problem. It adopts 15 June but notes that the 1983 Bruges catalogue read 17 June. The difference is therefore traceable to published readings of the object. Following the current museum and conservation account is more useful than silently combining the two dates. Neither reading establishes a wedding anniversary or other occasion for the portrait. The date and age deserve precision without an invented celebration attached to them.^[7]

Jan de Leeuw: a name made partly from an image

The original frame of the goldsmith Jan de Leeuw's portrait uses a Flemish inscription with a small lion standing for part of the sitter's name. The Kunsthistorisches Museum explains that the words give his birth on Saint Ursula's day in 1401, identify Van Eyck and date the likeness to 1436. The lion is a rebus: a picture that contributes to reading the name. A text-only transcription needs to acknowledge the image rather than pretend an ordinary written surname occupies its place.^[8]

Watch: Jan van Eyck in context

Choose a Smarthistory close reading of the Arnolfini Portrait or the closed and opened Ghent Altarpiece.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait

Smarthistory

Look closely at the room, mirror and gestures in the London double portrait.

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▶01 · PortraitThe Arnolfini PortraitSmarthistory▶02 · ExteriorThe Ghent Altarpiece, closedSmarthistory▶03 · InteriorThe Ghent Altarpiece, openSmarthistory

This is another constructed speaking likeness, but its means differ from Margareta's Latin relationship to her husband. It combines a birth reference, a vernacular poem, an image within the wording and an assertion that the painter has portrayed the man. The sitter holds a ring, appropriate to the museum's identification of his work as a Bruges goldsmith. Frame and figure supply complementary information. Translating only the poem, or showing only a cropped face, removes part of that encounter.^[6][8]

Léal Souvenir: a phrase whose purpose remains open

LEAL SOVVENIR, conventionally translated “Loyal Remembrance”, appears on the fictive stone parapet of the 1432 portrait of an unidentified man. It is not a secure personal maxim by Van Eyck. The National Gallery allows several possibilities: the words might concern likeness, a keepsake or remembrance after death. The apparent damage to the stone can support a memorial interpretation without proving that the sitter had already died.^[9]

Two other inscriptions complicate the picture. An abbreviated Latin statement at the bottom supplies Van Eyck's name and 10 October 1432. A higher line, conventionally transcribed TUM OTHEOS, remains obscure; the Gallery gives “then God” as its sense while leaving the meaning unresolved. These lines should not be fused into one supposed message. The original frame is lost and the panel has been trimmed; the frame now surrounding it is a modern replica. Missing identifying information cannot be reconstructed simply because other portraits retain speaking frames.^[9]

This is a case in which a good quotation preserves an unanswered question. The French phrase can be reproduced accurately while its purpose stays uncertain. A confident English slogan about loyalty, bereavement or friendship would promise more than the object currently establishes.

Sacred dialogue: words painted by Jan, spoken by biblical figures

In the Washington Annunciation, gold words pass between Gabriel and Mary. The National Gallery of Art transcribes abbreviated Latin forms beside each figure; Mary's reply is upside down and reversed. These are neither signatures nor personal comments about the painter's practice. The object record carefully locates them, alongside other inscriptions within the church, so their speakers and positions can be distinguished.^[10]

The Gallery's interpretation identifies the exchange with Luke's Gospel. Gabriel's greeting, Ave gratia plena, addresses Mary as full of grace; her Ecce ancilla domini identifies her as the Lord's servant. The museum explains the inverted response as words directed to be read from above, by God. Orientation participates in meaning. An upright quotation graphic can give an English translation while losing the visual relationship between speaker, words and intended reader that the picture constructs.^[11]

The Annunciation Diptych in Madrid offers a different arrangement. The Thyssen-Bornemisza describes the opening and closing phrases of the same biblical dialogue on its painted frames. Gabriel and Mary resemble pale sculptures against dark backgrounds; lettering seems cut into the surrounding fictive stone. Words can thus accompany apparent statues as well as living figures. The museum's dating is approximate, around 1433–35: the biblical quotation should not be mistaken for an inscription fixing a precise year of manufacture.^[12]

The motto on a devotional triptych

The Dresden Virgin and Child with Saints Michael and Catherine brings several functions of a frame together. Noëlle Streeton's study records a central inscription with the painter's signature, his motto and the year 1437, while coats of arms appear on the wing frames. Its examination of possible Giustiniani patronage draws on heraldry and banking records as well as the painted object.^[13]

That combination is a useful limit on what a signature can do. Van Eyck's name and date provide one kind of evidence; a donor's identity requires another. The motto's appearance in a religious commission also prevents it from being read only as a caption to the artist's own face. Its place within a larger framed object changes its companions and its audience, even when a familiar short English translation remains possible.^[2][13]

The Ghent quatrain: crediting makers and patron

The frame inscription associated with the Ghent Altarpiece is a four-line Latin poem. In paraphrase, it credits Hubert with beginning the work and his brother Jan with completing it at Joos Vijd's request, and supplies 6 May 1432. Saint Bavo's Cathedral connects that date with the altarpiece's first installation in the donors' chapel. It is a statement presenting a collaborative commission, rather than a recorded speech by Jan.^[14]

Its material history affects its authority. KIK-IRPA explains that the verse was uncovered beneath overpainting in 1823 and that the conservation campaign established its authenticity. Technical examination subsequently supplied evidence for successive interventions in the central Adoration. The inscription and paint layers therefore inform each other. The four lines cannot independently allocate every figure, landscape passage or later alteration between the brothers.^[15]

For quotation, a short paraphrase should remain labelled as such, with the frame named as its source. The poem's praise of the artists does not reveal who composed it or establish that Jan privately ranked his abilities in those exact terms. The language presents the completed project to viewers; the surviving work and its examination provide further evidence about how that project developed.^[14][15]

Hidden inscriptions recovered through science and palaeography

The Met's Crucifixion and Last Judgment demonstrate why a present-day photograph is not always the whole textual record. Investigation revealed concealed lettering around their frames. Silvia Centeno and Sophie Scully explain how elemental mapping traced lead-containing letters and how microscopic samples exposed white writing on an original red surface beneath later decoration. Examination also supported the originality of the raised Latin lettering on the inner frame mouldings.^[16]

Reading the recovered fragments required another expertise. Marc Smith, a palaeographer at the École nationale des chartes and École pratique des hautes études in Paris, identified a Middle Dutch rendering of the Latin biblical passages. He tested possible words against spacing, surviving strokes and medieval abbreviations. In 2019 he reported a reliable reconstruction of nearly three quarters of the total, with losses and alternative readings still acknowledged. A reconstruction is not the same as an uninterrupted, fully legible original text.^[17]

Smith also found that the Latin passages had been selected and adapted to the images and available space, rather than copied mechanically from a continuous biblical passage. His linguistic discussion leaves room around the exact place and timing of the Dutch translation. These words belong to the devotional programme and its workshop history. They should not become an unattributed statement of the painter's personal beliefs merely because they surround his work.^[17]

Copied words can outlive their original surface

The Rijksmuseum's 1769 Saint Barbara print by Cornelis van Noorde reproduces an older frame with Van Eyck's name and the year 1437. Its Dutch record distinguishes printmaker, source painter and publisher. The copied fifteenth-century date belongs to the represented model; it does not date the paper impression. The image and etched frame are even assembled from separate sheets.^[18]

Strasbourg's Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins records another impression, likewise dated 1769 and described in French as after Van Eyck. Its description explicitly notes the older signature and date at the bottom of the frame. The agreement demonstrates why a readable signature must be connected to its physical carrier. A later reproduction may transmit genuine wording while remaining a later object. The Prints guide follows the reproduction's own history in more detail.^[19]

Working notes offer a different kind of voice

The Dresden portrait study traditionally associated with Cardinal Albergati preserves practical colour annotations beside a monochrome head. The Morgan Library explains that these describe features including eyes, lips, skin, hair and beard for use in the subsequent painting. Its current account questions the old identification of the sitter. These notes are closer to working observations than the public devices on finished frames, but they still concern a particular task.^[20]

They are valuable precisely because they are specific. A notation about a shade of flesh or stubble can illuminate observation and preparation; it is not a general theory of colour or a recipe for the oil medium. Transcribing fragments also calls for care over what remains legible and what an editor has supplied. An attractive modern maxim about seeing cannot be substituted for those limited, concrete remarks.^[20]

How to quote the inscriptions responsibly

Start by naming the work and identifying where the text occurs. Specify whether it is an original frame, a painted wall, an imaginary stone surface, a working sheet or a later reproduction. Then identify the voice: maker, object, sitter, biblical figure or a poem crediting a commission. Keep the original phrase separate from an English gloss and mark omissions or supplied letters when they matter.

Finally, carry the uncertainty with the quotation. A secure date need not settle a sitter's identity. A legible sentence can still have a disputed purpose. A conservator's recovered reading can revise an older transcription. Van Eyck's surviving words reward that attention: they help pictures declare their making, direct a viewer's gaze and give figures the appearance of speech. They remain more revealing in those settings than as unsupported sayings detached from any traceable source.

Related reading

Portrait of a Man in a Red Chaperon

Madonna at the Fountain

The Arnolfini Portrait

References

1. National Gallery, London, “Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)”, NG222: motto, original frame and dated signature. View Source.
2. KMSKA, “Madonna at the Fountain”, 411: original frame, motto and completion inscription. View Source.
3. Leo van Puyvelde, “De taal van Jan van Eyck”, 1955, pp. 213–223, DBNL: historical linguistic study, read in Dutch. View Source.
4. Lorne Campbell, “The Arnolfini Portrait”, National Gallery catalogue: signature and legal-witness argument. View Source.
5. National Gallery, London, “The Arnolfini Portrait”, NG186: mirror, qualified identifications and painted inscription. View Source.
6. Musea Brugge, “Portrait of Margareta van Eyck”, 0000.GRO0162.I: transcription, speaking frame and date. View Source.
7. Jill Dunkerton with Rachel Billinge, Rachel Morrison and Ashok Roy, “The Restoration and Technical Examination of Jan Van Eyck's Margaret, the Artist's Wife”, Flemish Art Collection: inscriptions, frame illusion and competing date readings. View Source.
8. Kunsthistorisches Museum, “Highlights der Altniederländischen Malerei”, Jan de Leeuw entry: original frame, lion rebus and dates. View Source.
9. National Gallery, London, “Portrait of a Man (‘Léal Souvenir’)”, NG290: three inscriptions, lost original frame and unresolved meaning. View Source.
10. National Gallery of Art, Washington, “The Annunciation”, 1937.1.39: inscription locations and transcription. View Source.
11. National Gallery of Art, “Stories and Symbols in Jan van Eyck's The Annunciation”: biblical dialogue and inverted response. View Source.
12. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, “The Annunciation Diptych”: Luke dialogue, fictive frame and approximate dating. View Source.
13. Noëlle L. W. Streeton, “Jan van Eyck's Dresden Triptych: New Evidence for the Giustiniani of Genoa in the Borromei Ledger for Bruges”, JHNA 3.1, 2011: signature, motto and patronage evidence. View Source.
14. Saint Bavo's Cathedral, “The Ghent Altarpiece”: quatrain and 1432 presentation. View Source.
15. KIK-IRPA, “Het mysterie van Hubert van Eyck en het Lam Gods opgehelderd”: quatrain recovery, authenticity and technical findings, read in Dutch. View Source.
16. Silvia A. Centeno and Sophie Scully, “Unlocking the Mysteries of Two Jan van Eyck Frames, Part Two: Imaging the Hidden Details”, Met, 2019. View Source.
17. Marc Smith, “Unlocking the Mysteries of Two Jan van Eyck Frames, Part Four: What Does the Text Mean?”, Met, 2019: palaeographic reconstruction and its limits. View Source.
18. Rijksmuseum, “Heilige Barbara”, RP-P-1882-A-5680: Van Noorde's 1769 print and copied 1437 inscription, read in Dutch. View Source.
19. Musées de Strasbourg, “Sainte Barbe”, 77.2020.0.2670: French record of the 1769 reproduction and older signature. View Source.
20. Morgan Library & Museum, “Jan van Eyck: Portrait of an Older Man”: colour notes and questioned Albergati identification. View Source.