Bildnis der Margarete van Eyck

In 1439 it was almost unheard of for a painter to make a formal portrait of his own wife, and Jan van Eyck did exactly that. This is Margareta, and the inscription van Eyck painted onto the frame speaks in her voice, recording that her husband completed her on the 15th of June that year, when she was 33. It is one of the last things he made before his death, and one of the earliest European paintings to show a painter's spouse as a subject worth the same careful attention as a wealthy patron. Her red dress with its heavy fur, and the elaborate horned headdress with its pleated linen, mark her out as a woman of standing, not a craftsman's wife. She outlived Jan by more than fifteen years and seems to have kept his Bruges workshop running after he was gone.