Portrait of Margareta van Eyck

Van Eyck's 1439 portrait of his wife Margareta, now in Bruges, was painted one year before his death and is one of the few clear instances of a self-commissioned work in his oeuvre — a portrait painted for personal reasons rather than for a patron. Margareta was twenty-two when Van Eyck painted her portrait, the couple having married around 1430, and the portrait shows his full command of his mature oil technique applied to the intimate subject of a beloved face. The portrait's famous inscription — 'My husband Jan van Eyck made me on 17 June 1439. My age is 33' — documents Margareta's self-identification with the portrait and her understanding of it as a kind of second self created by her husband's art.

Van Eyck paints his wife with the same unflinching naturalism he brought to all his portraits, rendering every detail of her fashionable horned headdress and red dress with precise glazing technique while capturing her direct, composed gaze.