"The Virgin and Child and Donor" is painted on wood two feet square. It sparkles today with a gem-like luster scarcely if at all diminished since the colors of the Van Eyck brothers were the envy of their contemporaries.

And what a monument to his own unquestionable virtue Chancellor Nicolas Rolin reared when he commissioned jan Van Eyck to paint him so devoutly kneeling to the Virgin and Child! The likeness is convincing, the piety of Nicolas is impressive, and the memory of this worthy patron of the arts is assured forever. Between the columned arches lies what would appear to be a dream city but the magnifying glass has revealed its details for identification with many of the still existent buildings of Bruges.

There have been many distinguished craftsmen in the arts throughout the ages: the Van eyck brothers are of their company. They have been none whose craftsmanship has served a more devout, believing, and tenderly perceptive soul that Jan van Eyck's.

Not only were the Van Eycks, Hubert and jan, known by those values upon which true distinction in painting rests; they were important innovators through the introduction into their compositions of actual portraits in thress-quarter view meticulously faithful to the characteristics of their sitters, and, through their rendering of light and distant detailed landscapes, the precursors of the realism which was to follow.

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