Jan van Eyck’s famous Flemish masterpiece painting “Arnolfini Wedding Portrait” is considered one of the most important and complex paintings in the history of Western art. It is an oil painting on oak panel, .2 (panel .5) cm × (panel .5) cm (.4 in × .6 in). It was created in and is in the collection of the National Galley in London. The attention to detail and the use of light to evoke space in an interior is remarkable and broke new ground in painting. The symbolism is remarkable. Many point to this gesture as proof of the painting’s purpose. Is it a marriage contract or something else? ►Although many viewers assume the wife to be pregnant, this is not believed to be so. Art historians point to numerous paintings of female virgin saints similarly dressed, and believe that this look was fashionable for women’s dresses at the time. Fashion would have been important to Arnolfini, especially since he was a cloth merchant. The more cloth a person wore, the more wealthy he or she was assumed to be. On the other hand, some viewers have argued that the woman in the portrait is already pregnant, thus the protruding belly. A third view is that the woman’s protruding belly is simply a symbol of the couple’s desire for progeny. ►Behind the pair, the curtains of the marriage bed have been opened; the red curtains might allude to the physical act of love between the married couple. ►The mirror represents the eye of God observing the vows of the wedding. ►The mirror reflects two figures in the doorway, one of whom may be the painter himself. In the controversial view of the art historian Erwin Panofsky, the figures are shown to prove that the two witnesses required to make a wedding legal were present, and Van Eyck’s signature on the wall acts as actual documentation of an event at which he was himself present.
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