The Arnolfini Portrait
Jan van Eyck (active 1422, died 1441) · 1434
A richly dressed man and woman stand in a bedroom in Bruges, hands joined, a small dog at their feet. The man is usually identified as Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in the city, and the woman as his wife. For centuries people read the scene as a wedding, and the raised hand, the single lit candle and the shoes cast aside were all taken as marriage symbols. Scholars now argue about what exactly is happening, but the sense of a private and serious moment is unmistakable.
Look closely at the mirror on the back wall. Its convex surface reflects the couple from behind, and between them two more figures standing in the doorway, one of whom may be the painter himself. Above it, in elegant Latin script, is the inscription Johannes de eyck fuit hic, meaning Jan van Eyck was here, with the date 1434. Around the mirror frame are ten tiny scenes from the Passion of Christ, each smaller than a fingernail. Van Eyck built the picture with translucent layers of oil paint, which is why the green wool of the dress, the fur, the brass chandelier and the oranges on the chest all seem to catch real light.
The painting passed through Spanish royal hands, was seized during the Napoleonic wars and reached London with a Scottish officer, who sold it to the National Gallery in 1842. It was one of the first great early Netherlandish pictures to enter a public collection, and it changed how people understood the beginnings of oil painting. Notice that the woman is not pregnant, as visitors often assume; she is holding up the heavy folds of a fashionable gown.
Did You Know? The two figures reflected in the tiny mirror have been called the first selfie in Western art, since one of them is probably Van Eyck himself.
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