Barthélemy d'Eyck

For centuries this painter had no name, only nicknames scholars gave him: the Master of the Aix Annunciation for his panels, the Master of King René for his manuscripts. Today most experts agree these were one man, Barthélemy d'Eyck, born around 1420 in the Netherlandish lands and probably a relative of the more famous Jan van Eyck.

His life ran through the court of René of Anjou, a duke who was also titular king of Naples and Jerusalem, a great patron and himself a writer. Barthélemy served him as painter and valet de chambre, and illuminated René's own allegorical love story, the Livre du Cœur d'amour épris, filling its night scenes with real darkness, lit by a single candle or a low moon.

Around 1443 to 1445, in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, he painted the Annunciation now split between four cities, its Virgin set inside a shadowy stone church, where he handled cast shadow and lamplight decades before this became common in painting further north. We know almost nothing else of the man, not even when he died, only that it was sometime after 1470.