There are multiple identities applied to the ten riders in the Just Judges panel. Soon after it completion Jan van Eyck ‘layered’ his figures in another major work – The Arnolfini Portrait.

While art historians generally assume that the two people depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, no one is really sure.

A couple of years ago I demonstrated on my website that the male figure represented both Jan van Eyck and Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and not Arnolfini.

The figure of Jan van Eyck in the Just Judges panel supports this as it also doubles up as Philip the Good.

Philip later intimated the genius of his valet de chambre when in March 1435 he informed officers of the Chamber of Accounts in Lille that he would be greatly displeased if they delayed registering his letters patent granting Van Eyck a life pension, as he was about to employ Jan on “certain great works and could not find another painter equally to his taste nor of such excellence in his art and science.”

I sense that the Duke of Burgundy may have had the Ghent Altarpiece in mind when he spoke of Jan’s “excellence in his art and science.”