Portait of a Man in Red Turban

In the National Gallery in London stands the work of art that helped form our modern day view of painting. Jan Van Eyck's Man in Red Turban drastically differed from the painting styles used before him. The Flemish artist, credited with the discovery of oil paints, reestablished the use of a direct portrait, having not been done for hundreds of years. Painted through the eyes of the man being depicted, Van Eyck creates the sensation that the man is merely looking into a mirror, with the painting as his reflection. This may be the first perfectly done direct portrait, where the eyes of the figure seems to follow one across a room. Through his use of oil paints, Van Eyck is able to capture an amount of detail never seen before. He portrays a naturalism far more realistic than any of his predecessors through the addition of the minutest details: individual capillaries in the man's bloodshot eyes, a relaxed and natural three-quarter head turn, a faint but noticeable shadow of stubble, wrinkles and bags underneath tired eyes. As seen in the magnificent folds in the Turban, the shadows under the folds in the man's aged skin, and the light reflecting off the man's right eye, the oils allow Ban Eyck to establish a better sense of three dimensions.
A controversy among critics has arisen around this particular work of Van Eyck: is this a self portrait? Still in it's original frame, one can read the inscription on the top central panel as it simply says in Greek "As I Can", then below on the central bottom panel in Latin, "Jan Van Eyck Made Me". Although this seems to be fairly solid evidence to the theory, it cannot be proved for sure. What this portrait does depict is the desire for secular artwork from the growing middle class of the time. In years before, painting and sculpture was dominated by the religious figures, disrupted only by the an occasion royal depiction.