from the Burgundian Netherlands and the territories adjoining them--Limburg and Guelders--that some of the most accomplished painters had come in the period before 1416. Artistic influences from the court of Charles IV at Prague also moulded the movement towards greater realism in painting which can be discerned from the 1380s onwards. The early panel portrait of Duke Rudolf of Austria (c. 1365) reveals this Czech influence, which had in turn experienced the infiltration of both Italian and French styles under Charles IV. Bohemian painters were found in England under Richard II and the Parler family of Cologne, who built St Vitus's cathedral at Prague with Matthew of Arras, acted as intermediaries between central Europe, the Low Countries, and France. In 1425 one Jan Van Eyck, painter, from Maastricht, appeared in the service of Philip the Good of Burgundy and this was the beginning of ducal patronage of the new, realistic panel-painting which was soon to be taken up by the duke's Netherlandish subjects and his Italian creditors.
Clearly the art of Van Eyck met certain needs and demands. The degree of realism and accuracy which his oil portraits, for example, displayed was unprecedented. From the portrait of the donor in altar-pieces (diptychs, triptychs, or polyptychs) offered to private chapels (or chantries) within parish or cathedral churches stemmed the independent portrait. Commemoration of the individual was now possible, and the donors of panel-paintings could see themselves in the company of the saints, in adoration of the Virgin and Child, on the same scale and within the same spatial setting as the objects of their devotions. This was 'personalized' devotional religion at its most individualistic. Pierre Bladelin, financier of Bruges, or Canon George Van der Paele, prebendary of the Church of St Donatian at Bruges were depicted by Jan Van Eyck and Roger Van der Weyden in close and intimate proximity to the Christ child and his Mother. This was what they wanted as both patrons and believers, and Van Eyck and Van der Weyden ministered to these desires. To speak of 'profanation' in this context, as Huizinga does, is to let subjective value-judgement enter the question. Lay and indeed clerical piety at this time
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