Art analysis of Jan van Eyck s The Arnolfini Portrait from 1434

Let's take a look at the Arnolfini portrait by Jan van Eyck. This is a smallish painting. It's about two feet wide and about three feet tall, and you can find this in the National Gallery in London, England. It's painted with oil paint on top of oak wooden panels, and this was painted at about 1434, and this painting is loaded with symbolism. Let's start off by looking at Arnolfini himself. He's off on the left of the painting, and he's wearing this dark black hat, and he's wearing this magnificent blackish sort of purplish robe, and this robe is made out of fur, and it's obviously something that's really quite expensive. He's wearing black socks, and you notice that he's not wearing shoes at the moment. If you look at his skin, you'll notice that he's very, very pale. He doesn't go outside much. In fact, you get the sense that he's a person who works in an office a great deal, and that actually tells you a little bit about what his actual job is. Arnolfini is a banker, and he's the representative of an Italian bank in the Netherlands, and one of the things that's noticeable about this time is that local police forces didn't really exist, and so if you lent money to somebody and they didn't pay you, you couldn't go to a court or police and say, help, this person has ripped me off. Instead, what you had to do was collect your money in different kind of ways, and so here's a person who, if you didn't pay them up, he would send people to your house to collect that money. I've had students in the past describe him as looking a little bit like a thug or a mob boss, and the reality is that he probably had little bits of that in him as part of his job. Over on the right, you have a young woman, and she's looking really quite humble. And she's also quite young. Look at the clothes that she's wearing, though. These are also really expensive clothes. That veil that she's wearing on the top, that has handmade lace in it. It would have been quite expensive. That green wool that her dress is made out of, that would have been very expensive as well. And if you look, the edges of the wool dress are done in fur, and so this is a person who obviously has a little bit of money. One of the things that everyone notices when they first look at this painting, though, is how her stomach is bulging out like that. And she's actually not pregnant. And that might seem weird to us, especially because of the way that she's holding her hand on her belly. This is something that you see all the time for women who are pregnant. But what's actually happening is fashion. It was fashionable at the time to have a whole bunch of padding on your belly. It was sort of the thing like, just like 100 years ago in North America, people used to have bustles to make their butts look absolutely huge. Back at this time, people put padding in their bellies in order to make them look particularly fashionable. But she's actually not pregnant. Let's look around this room a little bit. And up at the top of the painting, you see this expensive candelabra. And it looks like it's made of brass. And it's done in extraordinary detail. People have wondered for years, how did he get this degree of observation? Was it traced? And there's actually evidence that Van Eyck used a combination of lenses in order to be able to trace this candelabra in all of its detail on a canvas before he started painting it. Now, the fact that this thing is so expensive is done on purpose. Van Eyck is trying to show that Arnolfini has money and that Arnolfini can afford little household treasures like this. Notice, though, the candle. There's only one lit. And there's a reason for that. In paintings of this age, most of the time, everything has a symbolic nature. In this particular case, the candle is kind of like the light of God. And it's like the painter is trying to put the presence of God into this painting. And there's actually a specific reason for that, which we're going to find out later. Right underneath that candelabra is this ornate and beautiful signature. It's written in Latin. And it says Johannes de Eyck, 1434. And that translates into English as Jan van Eyck was here in the year 1434. And it's done in a way that shows that van Eyck is incredibly proud of what he's achieved. Van Eyck is trying to say not only that he did this, but look at what I've achieved. Underneath van Eyck's signature, you'll find these two objects. You'll find some beads and you'll find a mirror. But these are not normal beads. These are prayer beads, the sort of beads that you would hold in your hands. And you would play with the beads as you would make your daily prayers. The mirror itself is also curved. And this is not an accident. You see, there's this person named Alhazen, who was an Islamic scholar whose scientific research on optics was discovered by Europeans when they started invading Islamic Spain and going through the libraries of the cities that they took over. Van Eyck is trying to tell us both that this family is very religious, but also that they're up to date in the new exciting discoveries that are coming from other countries. When you look closer at this mirror, you find a couple things. One is that all around the outside edge of the mirror are all of these tiny paintings. And what these tiny paintings are, are the last days of Jesus. And this is, again, trying to show that Arnolfini is very religious. But if you look even closer, you can see the back of the couple. And you can see two people watching. If we go down and look below their feet, there is the world's fluffiest dog. Van Eyck has painted this with a great deal of care. And you can see just about every hair in this dog put in there. But this dog is not just cute. The dog is there for symbolism. Dogs are a symbol of loyalty. If you were, for example, making a painting and you included a picture of a cat, you're trying to say that maybe there's disloyalty happening. But dogs are the opposite. So by Van Eyck putting this puppy into this painting, he's trying to say that the relationship between these two people, between this man and this woman, is very, very loyal. One of the things that's interesting in this painting is that both of these two people have taken off their shoes. His shoes are off in the bottom left-hand corner. And they're wooden shoes because, of course, this is the Netherlands. Her shoes are these red ones, which are to the bottom middle of the painting. And you have to wonder, why have they taken off their shoes? Now, many of us live in houses where we're encouraged to take our shoes off. However, back then, keeping your shoes on was fairly normal. Unless there was a special occasion. Or if you're going into a sacred space. Which brings us to the body language. These two people are holding hands and he is raising his right hands. Almost like he's taking an oath. And that's what leads a lot of people to believe that this is a painting about a wedding. That they're in the midst of their vows. The two people in the mirror are the witnesses of the wedding. All of the symbolism about loyalty and religious belief is making us feel that this is a painting that commemorates a solid and stable union. And this is where the symbolism in the painting starts to get pretty obvious. Behind her is a big comfortable bed. And I think the symbolism there is pretty blatant. And I won't go into too much detail about that one. And similarly, in the left behind him is a window. And outside the window, you can see orange trees with oranges on the branches. And in fact, there are fresh oranges on the sideboard and on the window ledge behind them. This painting is showing trees bearing fruit, which is a symbol of fertility. So when you put these clues together, it looks like this is the portrait of the beginning of the Arnolfini family. The two people are shown wealthy. They're shown healthy. They're shown exchanging vows. Vows that are likely to be their wedding vows. They're shown to be religious. But they're also shown to be up to date with current technology and science. And the entire thing is basically saying, look at us. We are young. We are prosperous. And we are bringing our two lives together in this positive and beautiful way.