Founders

Jan van Eyck ( 1441) Was a Flemish Painter Active in Bruges Most Significant Representatives of Early Northern Renaissance Art. According to vasari and other art historians include Ernst Gombrich, He Invented Oil Painting, Oversimplification. The surviving records indicate that he was born around 1380 or 1390, in Maaseik, Limburg, which is located in present-day Belgium. He took employment in The Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants, and was employed as painter and valet de chambre to John III the Pitiless, ruler of the counties of Holland and Hainaut. After John's death in 1425, he was later appointed as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and worked in Lille before moving to Bruges in 1429, where he lived until his death. He was highly regarded by Philip, and undertook a number of diplomatic visits abroad, including to Lisbon in 1428 to explore the possibility of a marriage contract between the duke and Isabella of Portugal