The National Gallery in London will host "Van Eyck: The Portraits" in November, a landmark exhibition uniting all nine of Jan van Eyck's surviving portraits for the first time. This includes masterpieces like *The Arnolfini Portrait* (1434) and loans from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, alongside the recently conserved *Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)* (1433).
The exhibition matters because Van Eyck revolutionized portraiture by depicting non-aristocratic sitters with unprecedented naturalism, laying the groundwork for the Dutch Golden Age and modern portraiture. Many of these fragile paintings rarely travel, making this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see them together, highlighting Van Eyck's enduring influence on art history and the technical mastery of early oil painting.