Jan van Eyck — often called the world’s first and greatest oil painter — is classified as a “Flemish Primitives” artist. The term simply means that the Flemish (who were the most refined artists in the 1400s) hadn’t yet perfectly mastered 3-D perspective. This painting, entitled “Mother and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele,” is van Eyck’s masterpiece, painted in 1439.