Maaseik (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmaːsɛik]; Limburgish: Mezeik) is a city and municipality in the Belgian province of Limburg. Both in size (close to 77 km) and in population (approx. 25,000 inhabitants, of whom some 3,000 non-Belgian), it is the 8th largest municipality in Limburg. The town is the seat of the administrative arrondissement of Maaseik (kieskanton). Internationally, Maaseik is known as the assumed birthplace of the famous Flemish painters Jan and Hubert van Eyck.
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👉 Maaseik in the context of County of Loon
The County of Loon (Dutch: Graafschap Loon [ˈɣraːfsxɑp ˈloːn], French: Comté de Looz) was a county in the Holy Roman Empire, which corresponded approximately with the modern Belgian province of Limburg. It was named after the original seat of its count, Loon, which is today called Borgloon. During the middle ages the counts moved their court to a more central position in Kuringen, which today forms part of Hasselt, capital of the province.
From its beginnings, Loon was associated with the nearby Prince-bishop of Liège, and by 1190 the count had come under the bishop's overlordship. In the fourteenth century the male line ended for a second time, at which point the prince-bishops themselves took over the county directly. Loon approximately represented the Dutch-speaking (archaic French: thiois) part of the princedom. All of the Dutch-speaking towns in the Prince-Bishopric, with the status of being so-called "Good Cities" (French: bonnes villes), were in Loon, and are in Belgian Limburg today. These were Beringen, Bilzen, Borgloon, Bree, Hamont, Hasselt, Herk-de-Stad, Maaseik, Peer and Stokkem.
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Maaseik in the context of Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck (/væn ˈaɪk/ van EYEK; Dutch: [ˈjɑɱ vɑn ˈɛik]; c. before 1390 – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the supreme figures of the Early Northern Renaissance. Such was his legacy, that he has been called “the inventor of oil-painting” by Vasari, Ernst Gombrich, and others, although this claim is now considered an oversimplification.
Surviving records date his birth at around 1380 or 1390, in Maaseik (then Maaseyck, hence his name), Limburg, which is located in present-day Belgium. He took employment in The Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants, and was employed as painter and valet de chambre to John III the Pitiless, ruler of the counties of Holland and Hainaut. Some time after John's death in 1425, he was appointed as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and worked in Lille before moving to Bruges in 1429, where he lived until his death. He was highly regarded by Philip, and was dispatched on several diplomatic visits abroad, including one to Lisbon in 1428 to discuss the possibility of a marriage contract between the duke and Isabella of Portugal.