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Arnolfini Portrait - Jan Van Eyck
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The Arnolfini Portrait
by Jan Van Eyck is one of the most popular masterpieces
of the National Gallery in London but was painted
in Bruges, commissioned by rich merchants of fabrics in
Lucca, in 1434. This small oil masterpiece, on an oak panel, has
influenced painters and the history of art itself, from
Velázquez to David Hockney. The portrait has become a
symbol of marriage, but the identity of the couple and the
meaning of the scene are still uncertain. |
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 Van
Eyck's painting is also one of the most studied of all
times. The context is that of Flanders, an area
mainly located in the northern part of present-day Belgium,
one of the richest areas of Europe in those years, with
Bruges together with Florence, one of the richest
cities in the world, thanks above all to a flourishing
industrial and commercial activity. Only kings, noble high
lineage nobility or very wealthy people, as wealthy
merchants, could commission such a painting to an artist of
the genre and Giovanni Arnolfini (who had established
himself in northern Europe as agent of the Medici family)
had these requirements.
People said that van Eyck was an alchemist, and no wonder:
there is something magical, and not only in a symbolic
sense, in this painting; the way he seems to act as a window
on a real environment, first of all. This famous painting
has always been a mysterious object for art historians who
have tried to establish its context. There have been many
classical interpretations, including Erwin Panofsky's
analysis that the painting was a kind of legal document
to testify to a marriage. It is well known, however, that
the latter arguments were based on a study of the work,
which has not yet been fully investigated. This is a
painting in which every detail seems to tell us something.
For example, is the little dog an emblem of lust? Does it
mean the couple's desire to have a child in that big red
bed, as art historian Craig Harbison claimed? Or is
it the image of Christian fidelity? Did the woman allude to
her desire for motherhood by holding and grouping her dress
on her belly? Or is it just that, as you can see in other
paintings painted by Van Eyck, the painter liked to paint
women with large stomachs?
 There
is only one certainty: what is represented appears as a
real world, with real people. The key to the image is the
mirror on the wall. The mirror, so significantly
placed between the couple, is the image of what this
painting claims to be: a true reflection. The artist and
Arnolfini were courtesans of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip
the Good, but how many of us know exactly who Philip the
Good? This wealthy couple, the Arnolfini, obtained, through
the portrait, what the pharaohs thought they could reach
through mummification: the two have passed unscathed
centuries, along with their dog, their beautiful clothes and
oranges. The meaning of this painting is that wealth - the
richness of assuming Van Eyck as a portraitist - can make
immortality acquire, at least in art. I wonder why such a
famous work is not commercially exploited by a city like
Lucca, from where the Arnolfini came. Among other
things, Arnolfini (who died on September 11,1472) ordered in
his will (opened in Lucca on December 10,1474) that the
executors would take care of the creation of a perennial
benefit in exchange for the bequest, a daily mass in the
Church of San Romano in Lucca (in theory Mass should be
celebrated even today.... there was not a time limit in the
will, but now in the beautiful building from the inside ba
The chapter of the church had in dowry, to celebrate "ad
infinitum" the masses in memory of Arnolfini, land property
for 400 gold florins of Lucca, 357 large ducats and 8
bolognini. This was a very significant figure for the time
(1).
Guglielmo Petroni, writer from Lucca (author of the
Death of the river), wrote about the masterpiece by
Jan van Eyck and Lucca: "Will those names still be
familiar to every Lucchese today? Will those faces so much
of our own faces meet them several times at the Via Fillungo
walk? It will be that those two, with that domestic and
refined air, around the middle of' 400, there in Bruges,
beautifully integrated into the environment... in short,
they had remained so Lucchese that even the environment full
of Flemish symbols seems to be assimilated to the closed and
silent intimacy of certain houses in Lucca... It will be
what I don't know, but sure is that the two marriages for me
are home... It will be what I don't know, but sure is that
the two marriages are home to me." (2)
In Lucca there are still traces of the Arnolfini in a
street, in the name of a palace and in the echo of a wealth
that was.
How much can a picture be analysed?
This exceptional work lends itself, as we have seen, to more
than one reading. What is immediately striking is her
realism that borders on photographic perfection: the
newlyweds have young faces (for the times) but at the same
time intense, for the solemnity of the moment; their clothes
are sumptuous, the woman's right hand is abandoned in
complete confidence in that of her husband. The details are
so refined that they have created a whole piece of
literature about their meaning: the carpet, the dog, the
hooves, the clogs, the oranges, the only candle on the
chandelier, the rosary, the brush and above all the mirror,
where you can see reflections of the wedding witnesses'
shoulders that, placing the observer in the same position as
the painter, they reproduce in a more complex perspective
the entire setting. For the first time, a painter proposes a
more complex representation of space: in the same image we
can see the room from two points of view, that of the
painter and that
 of
the characters portrayed, opposite. This gives a 360°
representation of space. In the mirror we see the two
spouses of shoulders and, between them, we see two other
figures: one of them is obviously the painter who is
performing the portrait. Painter who places his signature in
unusual form, writing, right above the mirror, "Johannes
de eyck fuit hic 1434": Jan Van Eyck was here. This
painting was long among the treasures of the King of Spain
(the Netherlands became a Spanish province for 130 years),
and must have been seen by Velazquez, who replicated
the contrivance of the mirror in his famous
Las Meninas painting, which can still be seen today at
the
Prado Museum in
Madrid.
Van Eyck was very interested in the effects of light: oil
painting allowed him to represent all the details with great
finesse in this painting, starting with the sparkling brass
chandelier.
Let us now look at some interesting details of the picture
together.
The couple
Among the foreign merchants who lived in the prosperous 15th
century Bruges there were members of the Arnolfini family
from Lucca. They combined trade with finance and were among
the first business bankers. It has never been known for sure
which Arnolfini was portrayed, and perhaps it will never be
known with certainty. The most probable hypothesis is that
it was Giovanni Arnolfini, who should have married
Giovanna Cenami, (a daughter of another rich family from
Lucca in 1426, who should be his wife in the portrait) and
who could later be tied in a second wedding to another
woman. However, there is no documentary evidence of an
additional marriage. The most varied hypotheses have been
made about this, including that the painting was conceived
as a memorial to his dead wife. According to the researcher
Margareth L. Kostner, an almost homonymous relative
Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini was the character
represented in the double portrait of Van Eyck together with
Constanza Trenta, whom he married in 1426. For
others, Arnolfini's wife would have been Flemish. Towards
the end of this article I will speak to you about the thesis
of a scholar from Lucca, Marco Paoli, according to
whom the painting is a self-portrait of the painter himself
and his wife.
Pregnancy?
 John
and his wife had no children registered. Was the portrait to
be considered as a memorial to the consort, who died of
childbirth? Artists loved to represent women in a pregnancy
position, whether they were pregnant or not. Pregnancy, like
fertility, is an essential quality in a wife. There are
other symbols of fertility, from the red bed to the carpet -
a rare and expensive commodity in northern Europe in the
15th century, associated with a childbirth room. In
addition, the figure carved in the chair behind the woman is
Santa Margherita, the patron saint of childbirth.
The bed
This bed is what guests would have expected to see in a
reception room. It could not have been used to sleep, but
implicitly implied that the landlord was of a sufficiently
high status to exhibit possession as an ornament.
The candelabrum
 The
candelabrum has only a lighted candle, which symbolizes the
flame of love. The representation was a custom typical of
Flanders, the fact of leaving a single lighted candle on the
first day of the wedding. But it must also be remembered
that a lighted candle is also always used in the Tabernacle
of the church, symbol of the permanent presence of Christ.
Oranges on the
table
 Oranges
were a rare delicacy at that time, imported from the hottest
south. They were appreciated for their culinary properties
and often added peel in the preparation of sauces, which
animated the rigid Flemish winter. The fruit and orange
blossom were symbols of love and marriage, and the doctors
recommended oranges in order to avert the plague (the Nobel
Prize winner Linus Pauling with his famous book on vitamin C
would come only 5 centuries later).
Sandals and
carpet
  The
red sandals (on the floor) were a really fashionable element
of a wealthy woman's outfit. Dyed leather was another
luxury, with dark shades, the most difficult to achieve.
With the embellishment of polished brass studs, these
sandals had to be an expensive "status symbol". On the other
hand, the sandals made of wood and leather in the foreground
are for men, while the red ones in the second floor, at the
foot of the bed, are for women. This type of hooves was the
typical Dutch type of hoof of those who led a proba and
laborious life and Van Eyck probably included them in his
work because they contributed to give the impression of a
familiar and intimate dimension (and therefore of marriage
already happened). The carpet next to the bed, coming from
Anatolia, is very luxurious and expensive, another sign of
the wealth and position reached by Arnolfini.
The clothes
Both
characters of this painting wear the products that have made
Bruges the centre of a commercial empire: fur, silk, wool,
linen, leather and gold. The wife's dress is surprisingly
large (a replica made in 1997 by students at the Wimbledon
School of Art in London required 35 metres of material! Mrs.
Arnolfini was wrapped in squirrel fur, which the experts
tell us was required to require up to 2,000 skins. The fur
fur most expensive and prestigious at the time was sable
fur, reserved for the royalty and aristocracy. Giovanni
Arnolfini's Tabarro (the man-wheeled cloak) is
wrapped in a marten fur, which with its plum shades was
another affirmation of wealth, since dark dyes were the most
expensive to produce.
The mirror
 The
mirror provides a new subject, two more people entering the
room. The Latin inscription above it, Johannes Van Eyck
fuit hic (Jan Van Eyck was here), confirms the artist's
presence in this invented room. The slightly convex circular
surface was the only form available for glass mirrors that
were a rare domestic element. Only a few privileged people
in fact had the advantage of seeing their own faces.
Pearls and brush
 The
string of amber beads to the left of the mirror is a "paternoster",
a type of rosary that was produced in Bruges. Van Eyck was
perhaps advertising to a local industry that exported via
Arnolfini. The beads symbolized feminine piety and were a
customary gift that a man gave to his bride. The brush,
hanging on the right of the mirror, represents the tenacity
and humility of Christ's mother, which suggests the Flemish
tradition of showing biblical characters in a modern
context.
The dog
 It
is a Brussels griffin, the descendant of a long lineage of
Flanders' terriers reared for the capture of mice. The breed
reached England in the 19th century and its characteristics
are still carefully evaluated by the attentive lovers of the
canine pedigree. The small dog symbolizes fidelity (the name
of the dog Fido common dog originated from the Latin
trusted,"trust").
The characters
Various different hypotheses have been made about the
characters of Van Eyck's famous double portrait. In 1934 the
German art historian, Erwing Panofsky (4), published
an essay on the subject in which he claimed that the
painting represented the private wedding ceremony between
Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami. All the
details of this masterpiece allude, again according to
Panofsky, to the ritual of marriage in which Jan Van Eych
had participated as a witness.
Other scholars have supported quite different theses. For
example, the framework referred to a genuine business
contract between two spouses. Others have argued that the
painting was intended for Arnolfini di Lucca to highlight
the great economic fortune achieved by their relative in
Flanders. In 1990 Jacques Paviot, a French
researcher, found in the Lille archive in French
Flanders, a document according to which Giovanni Arnolfini
and Cenami had married in 1447, that is six years after the
death of Van Eyck and that therefore could not be identified
with the characters of the painting.
Another researcher, Margareth L. Kostner in a 2003
essay (The Arnolfini double portrait: a simple solution)
suggested that the man portrayed was a close relative of
them, namely Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini
represented with Costanza Trenta, whom he married in
1426, when the woman was just over 13 years old. Constance,
however, to complicate things, according to a mother's
document had died in 1433, a year before the painting was
made. For Kostner, therefore, the work does not represent
the bond of marriage, but it is a sort of memorial for the
disappearance of Constance one year after his death.
Let's go back a
little bit
 There
were several members of this family of Lucca, the
Arnolfini, in northern Europe at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. In cities such as Paris and
Bruges there were colonies of Italian merchant families
in this period. These families were actively engaged in the
trade in textiles and other luxury materials for the needs
of the nobility of northern Europe. Many of these families
were also involved in the banking sector. The historic
Flemish historian Antonius Sanderus, in the
seventeenth century, offers us a vision of the so-called
Bourse, the Stock Exchange, or Bruges' financial district
(the name Bag meant as Stock Exchange derives from a house
where merchants gathered to bargain letters of credit, the
house of the Van Bourse family).
 The
dominant buildings were at that time in the Domus
Florentinorum and Domus Genuensium, the
Florentine and Genoese houses. The accounting records of the
European standards of northern Europe had frequent records
of loans granted by these Italian merchants to help sustain
the liquid capital needs to support princely families. In
Bruges there was a Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini born
in Lucca in about 1400 who lived in the city since 1421. A
voice in the Archive of Bruges recorded that on July 1 of
that year John made a great sale of silks and hats. In 1423,
Giovanni was engaged in operations with the Duke of Burgundy
Philip the Good. That year there was a big payment to
Arnolfini by the duke for a series of six tapestries with
scenes of the Virgin Mary, destined as a gift to the pope.
In another recording in 1446 there are traces of a loan from
Giovanni Arnolfini to the Duke. Perhaps in exchange for the
loan, Philip gave the merchant from Lucca the right to
collect the tariffs on goods imported from England for a
period of six years. This profitable privilege was then
renewed for another six years. Meanwhile in Lucca, Aunt
Ginevra Cavalcanti had married Lorenzo de Medici,
brother of Cosimo de Medici called the old man. In 1461,
John became a councillor and doughnut of the Duke, and was
named a knight in 1462. Louis XI of France appointed
Arnolfini as adviser and governor of finance of Normandy.
John died in 1472 and was buried in the chapel of the
Lucchese merchants at the Augustinian Church of Bruges.
Giovanni married his namesake Giovanna Cenami, the daughter
of one of the most important families of Lucca in northern
Europe. Giovanna's grandmother was the nephew of Dino
Rapondi who together with his three brothers were close
financial promoters and bankers for the Dukes Philip the
Bold, John of Burgundy, and the already mentioned
Philip the Good between the end of the fourteenth
century and the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1432,
when the last of the four Rapondi brothers died, Philip the
Good had a special mass celebrated for them. Marriage and
alliances such as that between the Cenami and Rapondi
families were not just private matters, with the future of
family businesses indissolubly linked. For Giovanni
Arnolfini, marrying a member of such an important family was
undoubtedly a considerable boost to his financial fortunes.
We know that the couple died without children. However, they
may have had children from previous unions, although there
is no evidence of this. There are court documents that prove
that John had an extra-coniugal relationship (when he was
already widowed). In fact, in 1470, when Arnolfini was 70
years old, a very considerable age for the time, a woman
brought him to court to have the jewels that John had given
her back and then resumed her. The woman also tried to get a
pension and the property of some houses in his name and
promises to the lover.
 From
what has been said, we can venture a consideration. In the
portrait of Arnolfini Spouses there is an invisible
presence. Van Eyck draws attention to what cannot be shown
directly, God, the greatest symbol in Christian Europe.
Probably there is also another invisible presence, that is
Philip the Good. Why?
It is unlikely that Arnolfini or Cenami could approach Jan
Van Eyck directly to paint the double portrait. Since the
latter was the court painter of Filippo il Buono. The
Arnolfini or the Cenami would have had the Duke's permission
to dispose of the Master. The painter's signature documents
his role as a witness to the event and Van Eyck was a member
of the ducal court as a representative of the Duke himself.
Thus his signature bears with him both his personal
testimony and the endorsement of the ducal. Do you not know
exactly where did Duke Philip's commitment to the Arnolfini
family come from: a previous promise, a service fee, a
demonstration of esteem and affection? Whatever the answer,
the painting can be seen as a precise statement of
Arnolfini's belonging to the duke's narrow circle. After
all, Arnolfini was so important in the ducal court of Bruges
that Van Eyck painted another Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini
in 1440 that he is now at the
Gemäldegalerie
in Berlin.
How did the
painting get to the National Gallery in London?
 In
another document found in the State Archives of Lucca
we find a Giovanni Arnolfini (a name but certainly relative
of the other Giovanni), who had a bank in the city of
Lyon,
and who left considerable debts upon his death. Among these
were those with a certain Giovanni Joffrey lord of
Sallignon (3) who, with the subsequent descent into
Italy of Louis XII (to avoid threatening in any way
the independence of Lucca), was welded with 2500 gold
shields in 1500. This could explain in part the subsequent
alienation of the patrimony of the character portrayed with
his wife by Van Eyck, including the painting itself and the
fact that the Arnolfini of Lucca never came into possession
of it.
The first references on the painting you know are in the inventories of
Margherita d' Austria of 1516. The painting in 1523/24 was one of Margherita's
properties in Mechelen, where the noble woman exercised her protection of
the arts and sciences (under her protection was Erasmus of Rotterdam, among
others).
 Trusted
sources establish that the painting was a gift to the regent of the Netherlands
(Margherita) from Don Diego de Guevara, ambassador and prominent figure
in the Habsburg court in both Spain and Northern Europe (the same object of a
beautiful portrait of Michael Sittow also exhibited at the National
Gallery of Art in London). The latter served four, perhaps five, successive
Dukes of Burgundy, from the Valois to the Habsburgs, especially in the
Netherlands. He was also a personal attendant of Emperor Charles V. He is
remembered for being a significant art collector. We do not know how de Guevara
had taken possession of Van Eyck's painting. The Spanish courtesan also owned
paintings by Rogier van der Weyden and Hieronymus Bosch, which
were then sold to Philip II of Spain and today at the Prado Museum.
In October 1555, as part of the agreements reached for the division of the
Habsburg Empire following Charles V's decision to abdicate, the emperor
transferred the sovereignty of the Netherlands to his son Philip II. At
that point Margherita of Austria ended her regency. As a result of these
developments, the Austrian princesses prepared themselves for Spain. When
Margherita died in 1530, the painting was inherited by her nephew Maria of
Hungary, who in 1556 went to live in Spain. Upon the death of this painting,
the painting passed t o
Philip II. A painting by two of the young daughters of the King of Spain,
the "Portrait of the Infants of Spain Isabella and Catalina", today at the Prado,
commissioned by Philip is clearly a copy of the posture of the figures of Van
Eyck's painting. Among other things, this "copy" was painted by a forgotten
Italian painter, also mentioned in
Giorgio Vasari's Lives and
appreciated by Michelangelo, Sofonisba Anguissola da Cremona. In
the inventory of Mary's property in 1556, the first quotation in Van Eyck's
mirror is also noted. From this moment, the Arnolfini Portrait became part of
the royal collection of Spain and remained there until at least 1789, when the
painting was documented for the last time in the Royal Palace of Madrid.
It remains quite obscure how the painting was stolen from
the Spanish Crown during the turbulent years of the
Napoleonic Wars. The picture resurfaced somewhat in the
Netherlands in 1815. Perhaps it was an exchange between the
Bonaparte brothers, a Joseph who was King of Spain,
and a Louis, who was King of Holland, put there by his
emperor brother. A British army officer, Colonel James Hay,
discovered the painting hanging on the wall in Brussels,
where he was in convalescence after the Waterloo Battle.
When he fully recovered, he bought the painting and took it
to England where he tried to resell it to the English regent
prince. Hay didn't succeed in his intent, so he left the
work of van Eyck to a friend, who kept him hanging on a wall
for years, while Hay continued his military career,
especially abroad. Another theory, perhaps more probable, is
undoubtedly the presence of Hay at the Battle of Vitoria
(1813) in Spain, where a load of works of art was
intercepted, of which King Giuseppe Bonaparte had
appropriated himself and who was trying to get out of Spain.
It may have been at that point that Hay secretly seized it,
and then invented the next story and avoided possible future
claims by Spain itself. Finally, on the advice of a restorer
called Seguier, the National Gallery bought Van
Eyck's masterpiece from Hay, who had meanwhile become
general for 630 pounds. The market value is now between 28
million and 35 million, but perhaps a lot, much more, as we
say in these cases, is priceless??. That is, it is
impossible to make an estimate, to give a price, to a
masterpiece of this kind.
And if those weren't the Arnolfini but Van Eyck and his
wife?
In 2010 a book was published in which the scholar Marco
Paoli, director of the State Library of Lucca,
suggested and proposed a courageous thesis, out of the
schemes on Bruges' painting: the spouses portrayed by Van
Eyck might not be the Arnolfini, but the painter himself and
his wife Margaretha (Jan Van Eyck at the conquest of the
rose: the "Arnolfini" Wedding at the National Gallery in
London. Pacini Fazi Editore).
The painting would have a precise purpose: to celebrate the
birth of the first male son and love for his wife, with a
clear inspiration to the Roman de la Rose, masterpiece of
French medieval literature, well known in the court of
Burgundy. The identification with the Arnolfini, according
to Paoli, derives only from a linguistic assonance: that of
Hernoult le fin or Arnoult Fin, the names that were given to
the subject of the painting at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, when the inventories were born, with the
French handwriting of the surname Arnolfini ("Arnoulfin").
In 1857, two art historians proposed the recognition with an
Arnolfini, one English and one Italian Joseph Archer
Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, who
were based on the fact that in the 15th century the family
of Lucca had been very active in the silk market of Bruges.
For Paoli, no other evidence would ever have been found to
confirm the hypothesis. Nor is there a document that attests
to any contact of any kind between Van Eyck and the
Arnolfini. The painting, then, would remain unusually in
Flanders when both Arnolfini and Cenami had descendants in
Lucca. According to Paoli, the protagonists of the painting
had no Mediterranean traits, but Nordic traits.
As courageous as it may be and in its "revolutionary" way, I
am not convinced of this hypothesis. The fact that the
painting remained in its place of origin can be opposed to
what we knew about the fact that the Arnolfini family, who
had no children, had large debts pending shortly after the
death of Giovanni and this could have given rise to the loss
of part of the property, the one furthest from Lucca. On the
northern traits or not of the characters, the thesis is a
little bit softer. Even today, the descendants of the most
diverse cultures that have followed each other in Italy
often have "Nordic" traits rather than Mediterranean traits.
Lucca was also a "Longobard"city, effective capital of the
Lombard kingdom of Tuscia, to which also the last king of
Lombard Italy, Desiderio, gave.
In any case, Paoli's thesis is certainly fascinating, almost
heretical because, as the author admits, he destoricizes an
icon of art. If it were taken for good reason his theory,
the picture would meanwhile have to be renamed in another
way. And even the history of Lucca itself would be affected
(although most people in Lucca do not even know who Giovanni
Arnolfini is). The curious and funny fact then is that to
refute the Orthodox history of this painting is a very
Lucchese.
But Paoli brings other clues in support of his thesis.
 Van
Eyck's signature in the symbolic place of married life,
according to the scholar, would have been unacceptable for
any client of the time: it would have been a matter of
giving observers the news that another man, the painter, had
passed from that place. The subject of the painting would
therefore be the painter himself: proud of the high social
status achieved, he is a portrait of himself and his wife
set in the bedroom, an environment where only he, a
legitimate husband, could afford to write "Jan Van Eyck fu
qui". Another indication would be the resemblance of the
supposed Giovanna Cenami with the portrait of Margaretha
Van Eyck in Bruges. As far as this last point is
concerned, there is a painting inspired by Van Eyck, Sant'
Eligio and the boyfriends (also known as Sant' Eligio in the
workshop of a goldsmith) by Petrus Christus of 1449,
painted 15 years after the first one. Of course the setting
is not as intimate as the bedroom, but it's always a home
place. In 15 years the fame of the painting was to have
spread, so much so that it became a work of inspiration for
other great painters of the time. But there is
 no
trace (or at least it has not yet been found) of the fact
that Christus or someone else knew that Van Eyck's work was
a self-portrait. That would certainly have been known. The
artist who had died 8 years earlier would have no reason to
hide him. Even the time spent had been so short that the
memory of the events could not have been forgotten. Filippo
il Buono himself - who had Van Eyck as a court painter - who
died after several years, in 1467, never made any mention of
this in his inventories or memories. What is certain is that
Giovanni Arnolfini was among his most faithful subjects,
allies, financiers and probably friends. As a further
indication against Paoli's thesis, there is Van Eyck's
painting (left) which is credited by many as a self-portrait
of the painter Portrait of a man with a red turban (next to
him) showing a man very different from the Portrait of
Arnolfini's Spouses.
The mystery continues....
Di M. Serra per
Informagiovani-Italia
1.
Archivio di stato di Lucca
2. Il nome delle
parole Rizzoli 1984
3.
Archivio di Stato
4. Erwin Panofsky and The
Arnolfini Portrait 1934
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