남자의 초상 (자화상?)

Jan van Eyck finished this small panel on the 21st of October 1433, and we know the date because he painted it onto the frame in Latin, along with the line that Jan van Eyck made me. Across the top, in Greek letters, runs his personal motto, Als Ich Can, as I can, a modest pun on his own name. That habit of signing and dating so precisely was still unusual for a painter then. The man looks slightly to the side, his blue eyes not quite aligned, as if he were shifting his gaze from eye to eye while studying his own face in a mirror. That small tell is a large part of why many believe this is van Eyck himself. The elaborate red headdress wound and piled on top is a chaperon, everyday fashionable wear that here becomes a blaze of colour.