The National Gallery in London will present a landmark exhibition next winter, bringing together all nine surviving painted portraits by Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck for the first time in history.
Van Eyck: The Portraits will run from 21 November 2026 to 11 April 2027, representing half of the roughly twenty authenticated works by one of the Northern Renaissance’s most influential figures.
The exhibition centres on exceptional reunions of related works. The Gallery’s beloved Arnolfini Portrait (1434)—the most visited painting page on the museum’s website—will be displayed alongside Portrait of a Man (Giovanni? Arnolfini) from Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, marking the first time these two paintings of the same sitter have hung together.
Another highlight pairs van Eyck’s newly conserved Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) with his portrait of his wife Margaret, on loan from Bruges. The 1439 portrait of Margaret van Eyck holds particular historical significance as the first known portrait of a non-aristocratic woman.
Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is allowing both of its van Eyck paintings to travel simultaneously for the first time in the institution’s history.
“Portraiture bursts onto the scene fully formed in the 1430s under the brush of Jan van Eyck,” said Emma Capron, Curator of Early Netherlandish and German Paintings. “None of the stylised likenesses that preceded his work would pass as a portrait today. This changes with van Eyck.”
The accompanying catalogue will be the first monograph dedicated to van Eyck’s portraits—a surprising gap given the extensive scholarship on the artist.
Admission is charged. More information at nationalgallery.org.uk.
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