Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1441) was a Flemish painter whose innovations in oil technique shaped the Northern Renaissance. Serving as court painter and chamberlain to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, he worked in Bruges and created altarpieces, devotional works, portraits, and richly symbolic scenes admired for their clarity, luminosity, and spiritual depth. His meticulous attention to surface detail, radiant colour, and mastery of light made him one of the most influential painters of the fifteenth century. The Ghent Altarpiece, completed with his brother Hubert, stands as a cornerstone of Western art and a profound meditation on redemption.