Painted in 1433, Jan van Eyck's Portrait of a Man is widely thought to be a self-portrait, and it is not a flattering one. The sitter — quite possibly the artist himself — is shown with stubble, wrinkles and bloodshot eyes, rendered with such precision that it has been admired for nearly 600 years. The painting has hung in the National Gallery in London since 1851, and keeping it looking its best is a job for specialists, not enthusiasts with a cloth.
The gallery's conservator Jill Dunkerton has walked through exactly what that work involves. Paintings this old face a surprising list of threats simply by surviving: changing tastes that nearly consign works to oblivion, wars, and centuries of tobacco smoke that left a stubborn film of dirt over countless canvases and panels. And then there are the restorations themselves — well-intentioned attempts that have done more damage than decay. The infamously botched 2012 repainting of the Ecce Homo fresco in Spain remains the cautionary tale for anyone tempted to pick up a brush near an old master.
What makes the National Gallery's approach compelling is the patience of it. Conservation of an Early Netherlandish panel is less a dramatic makeover than slow, forensic cleaning and stabilization, done with solvents, tiny tools and a deep understanding of how van Eyck's oil layers behave. Van Eyck was a pioneer of oil painting, and the jewel-like detail in works like this — the fur collar, the lines around the eyes, that cryptic inscription on the frame — is exactly what restorers have to protect while removing what later centuries added. Done right, the paint van Eyck laid down in 1433 is what re-emerges, not a new version of it.
For travellers, the story is a good excuse to put the National Gallery on the itinerary beyond the big-hitters like Van Gogh's Sunflowers. The free-entry Trafalgar Square gallery holds one of the world's great collections of Northern Renaissance art, and Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait is just steps away from Portrait of a Man. Seeing the two together — the enigmatic Italian merchant and the unvarnished man in the red turban — gives you a real feel for why this artist is considered the finest painter of his century.
It is also a reminder of what you are actually looking at when you stand in front of an old painting. Every old master in a European gallery has survived plague, fire, war and dubious repair jobs to get to the wall in front of you. That is worth a few extra minutes of your visit — and, if the gallery runs talks or conservation displays during your trip, worth planning around. Whether the sitter really is van Eyck remains open to debate, but the honesty of the picture is not: no filter, six centuries old, and still looking you straight in the eye.