Portrait of Baudouin de Lannoy

Around 1435 the Burgundian court was the richest in Europe, and Baudouin de Lannoy was one of its senior men, a chamberlain to Duke Philip the Good and his ambassador to the English king. Van Eyck painted him wearing the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the exclusive knightly order Philip had founded only a few years earlier. That collar is the point of the picture. It marks his admission to the order, and the heavy brocade, the wide fur hat and the gold ring all speak the same language of rank. He holds a plain wooden baton, a mark of office. Van Eyck catches the heavy-lidded, slightly wary look of a man used to negotiating on a duke's behalf.