Philip the Good sent Jan van Eyck to Portugal to paint his bride
Before marrying Isabella of Portugal, Duke Philip of Burgundy dispatched Jan van Eyck in 1428 to paint her portrait for him. It was typical of a ruler whose court set Europe's fashions, who added some six hundred manuscripts to his library, and who also handed Joan of Arc over to the English.
Philip was born in Dijon on 31 July 1396, a member of a junior branch of the French royal house of Valois. He became duke in 1419, aged 24, when his father, John the Fearless, was assassinated during a meeting with the Dauphin Charles at Montereau. Blaming the Dauphin, Philip sided with the English king Henry V, sealing the pact at Troyes in 1420 and drawing Burgundy deeper into the Hundred Years' War.
On 23 May 1430 his troops captured Joan of Arc at Compiègne, and she was sold to the English, tried for heresy by pro-Burgundian clerics and burned in 1431. Yet in 1435 Philip switched sides, signing the Treaty of Arras that recognised Charles VII as king of France. In the long run the move backfired, since French kings then worked steadily to bring Burgundy under their control. Meanwhile he gathered territory by purchase, war and inheritance: Namur in 1429, Brabant and Limburg in 1430, Holland and Zeeland in 1432 and Luxembourg in 1443. The scholar Justus Lipsius later hailed him as founder of the Low Countries.
His court, which moved between Brussels, Bruges and Lille, was judged the most splendid in Europe. He turned down England's Order of the Garter in 1422 and in 1430 founded his own Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1454 he proclaimed a crusade against the Ottomans at the Feast of the Pheasant, though it never happened. Composers such as Gilles Binchois and Guillaume Dufay made his chapel the musical heart of Europe, and demand for Flemish luxury goods helped the Burgundian economy.
In 1463 he created an Estates-General for the Netherlands on the French model, partly to secure support for his son's succession. He married three times; only Charles, later called the Bold, of his three legitimate sons reached adulthood, while 24 documented mistresses bore at least 18 more children. He died in Bruges on 15 June 1467, weeks after putting down a second rebellion in Liège.
Source: Philip the Good
