An Oil-Rich Revolution

By JONATHAN LOPEZ The Road to Van Eyck Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Through Feb. 10 Rotterdam, Netherlands Early in the 15th century, the Van Eyck family of Netherlandish painters—principally brothers Hubert and Jan—initiated a visual revolution that radically altered the course of European art history. Working mostly at the courts of Holland and Burgundy, where sumptuousness and luxury reigned supreme, they exploited the versatile and relatively new medium of oil paint to introduce an almost magical sense of realism to their sparkling religious and secular images. A splendid exhibition at this city's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen traces the roots of these developments through a...