THE ARNOLFINI PORTRAIT
- Seda DOGAN DEMIREL
- Sep 7
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 6
Date: 1434
Artist: Jan Van Eyck
Art Movement/Period: Early Netherlandish Painting (Northern Renaissance)
Exhibited at: National Gallery, London
A Mirror, a Signature, a Thousand Questions
The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel by Jan van Eyck. With its originality and complex iconography, it is among the most intriguing paintings.
It still raises very fundamental questions. Who are this couple, and what are they shown doing? Why did Van Eyck add a Latin inscription on the mirror that reflects him “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic [Jan van Eyck was here] | 1434”? Who is present in this intimate room?
Identification and Dating: Current Consensus
For many years the painting was believed to depict a marriage ceremony; this is no longer the prevailing view. The male figure is Giovanni Arnolfini, a native of Lucca who settled in Bruges before 1421 and later rose to the titles of “Counsellor to the Duke of Burgundy” and “General Receiver of Finance in Normandy.” The woman is probably his second wife; her identity is unknown. The couple may also have been friends of Van Eyck, since the painter later produced another portrait of Arnolfini at an older age (Staatliche Museen, Berlin).
The poses and the meticulous arrangement of the interior have given rise to various interpretations of the couple’s situation. A sumptuously dressed man and woman stand in a private room. Jan van Eyck seems to depict a real room as it was, yet the objects have been carefully selected and placed to signal the couple’s wealth and social standing.
Interior Space Typology
The house appears to be of brick. The window opens onto a garden, where a cherry tree is visible. A large, luxurious bed is covered with an expensive red woollen coverlet. Red cushions and textiles lie scattered on the bedside chair and the bench. Although the room is often mistakenly called a bedroom, according to the National Gallery’s current materials it is not; rather, it is a reception room in the comfortably appointed, contemporary residence of a wealthy merchant.
The chair and the bench have rich carvings. At the top of the fine backrest, there is Saint Margaret praying, standing behind a dragon or seeming to come out of it. A lion is carved on the arm of the chair. An oriental carpet is on the floor, and a large brass chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Even the oranges show wealth, because they were very expensive. Still, this is not a palace: the floor is wooden, and the walls are covered with plaster, not wood panels or tapestries.
‘Fuit hic’: Witness or Signature of Mastery?
On the mirror it reads: “Johannes de eyck fuit hic / .1434.” The lettering, like other ornate inscriptions, is decorated with cadels (ornamental pen flourishes). It is unusual for an artist’s signature to be written on a wall. Some claim that the phrase “fuit hic” was used as a form of legal attestation. However, Campbell states clearly that “fuit hic” was not used in legal documents and is not a formula of testimony; the signature is more a declaration of the painter’s presence and skill.
From this signature, viewers infer that the man in front among the two seen in the mirror is Jan van Eyck. The man behind him is probably a servant.
The convex glass mirror is surrounded by a red-blue decorative border that itself looks slightly convex. The frame has ten sides, and on them are ten medallions. Inside these medallions are ten scenes from the Passion of Christ. The sequence begins at the bottom with the “Agony in the Garden” and continues clockwise around the frame with: the “Arrest of Christ,” “Christ before Pilate,” “Flagellation,” “Christ Carrying the Cross,” “Crucifixion,” “Descent from the Cross,” “Entombment,” “Harrowing of Hell,” and “Resurrection.”
Objects of Consumption and Social Meaning
A wooden seat with a footrest stands beneath the mirror. It is covered with red fabric and has two red cushions. Only the wealthiest households covered furniture in this way. On the armrest, a grotesque creature with an angry human face is carved—lion-eared and with hooves instead of hands. The creature wears a cap and a chest covering (apron-like) and leans its back against a carved lion or another similar grotesque. Seats were often decorated with carved lions; the grotesque is probably less usual.
Fruits like oranges were quite expensive. The Lucca merchants in Bruges traded not only in fine silks, but also in oranges and other exotic fruits. Sprinkling four oranges on the window ledge and on the chest—“as if careless but actually deliberate”—surely signals wealth. In front of the chest, and visible only in the mirror, there is a folding chair of the kind often seen in courtly miniatures. On the floor lies an Eastern carpet without tassels. Yet Van Eyck creates a convincing sense of reality by making aesthetic adjustments to the carpet’s pattern. In manuscripts, carpets appeared on the steps of princes’ thrones or on palace floors. In 15th-century Netherlandish art, Eastern carpets were rarely seen outside Bruges; they were almost unknown elsewhere, and even in Bruges they were uncommon.
The room’s restrained grandeur is balanced by the couple’s careful clothing. Neither the man nor the woman goes too far with flashy jewelry. Their outfits are expensive and fashionable, yet not showy. The man wears a hat woven from rushes and a dark tabard, probably silk velvet, trimmed with brown fur. Under it he has a black doublet, likely silk, with silver cuffs. His muddy pattens—clog-like overshoes—rest to one side on the floor.
The woman wears a fine green wool overdress with scalloped cuffs and a skirt long enough to make thick folds on the floor. Its edges are trimmed with white fur, probably sable or the white belly fur of a squirrel. To modern eyes she may look pregnant, but she is not. Like women of the period, she gathers the heavy front of her skirt and holds it before her. Her hair is styled in a fashionable yet restrained “horn” shape, fixed with red nets and covered with a complex, layered veil.
Technical Analysis: Traces of the Painting Process
Technical analysis tells us a lot about how the painting was made. Infrared reflectography (IRR) shows that the first drawings were done in stages. At the start, Van Eyck roughly sketched the figures, the main pieces of furniture, and the basic architecture of the room. But many of the objects that make the painting famous "the alert little terrier, the chandelier, the chair, the beads/rosary hanging on the wall, and the shoes set aside" were added later. These were painted at a later stage.
Van Eyck also changed the faces and bodies of the man and the woman. In the first underdrawing, Arnolfini’s face is larger and his features are stranger. His hat is bigger, his feet are placed differently, and his gown is shorter. The wife was first drawn looking up toward her husband, but this was later changed. Van Eyck often adjusted the heads and hands to highlight them; however, here the changes are quite many, especially in the man’s face. Arnolfini was probably an unusually looking man. In the second underdrawing, the painter corrected the proportions and idealized the facial features.
At that time, displaying silver on a sideboard was the clearest way to show wealth. Its absence is odd—just like the contrast between the fur clothing and the small signs that it is summer outside. The painting looks so real and convincing that it is easy to assume Van Eyck painted exactly what he saw. It feels as if a wall has been removed and we are looking in, but close study reveals inconsistencies. Of course, the signature and date would not actually be on Arnolfini’s wall. The chandelier cannot fit the space it seems to hang in; the bed looks too short. In the same way, Van Eyck “improved” the look of the white fur on the woman’s clothes and made aesthetic changes to the carpet pattern. He may have thought that a real Eastern carpet would look strange in the portrait. Whatever the case, it is clear that Arnolfini and his wife did not live in a room exactly like this one and did not own all the exact same objects. As usual, Van Eyck aimed to create a fully convincing “appearance of reality,” but he changed some things to fit his artistic aims and to match Arnolfini’s wishes.
This illusion of reality depends more on Van Eyck’s mastery than on a technical innovation. His ability to capture detail is very strong. The oranges reflect on the polished surface of the window frame; the rosary beside the bed creates both a shadow and reflections on the wall behind it. You can see the dog’s hairs one by one, and even the grain of the wooden floor is drawn. Although everything looks so clear, the painting was made surprisingly quickly and freely. Next to the shadow of the dog’s leg, you can see a thumbprint, and the bristles of the brush hanging by the bed appear as lines scratched into the paint.
Friedländer praises the composition of the Arnolfini Portrait as a miracle: “Two full-length figures standing side by side in a richly furnished room … the solution to a problem that no other painter of the fifteenth century addressed.”
Composition and Iconographic Context
Although the work was long read as a marriage ceremony, the current mainstream view does not require this. The National Gallery’s catalogue and museum text see the scene mainly as an interior portrait representing a wealthy merchant couple.
The couple’s way of joining hands (the bride’s right hand meeting the groom’s left) draws attention because it differs from the right-to-right standard in medieval sacramental images of betrothal or marriage. Some think it shows a secular, legal morganatic marriage (a union between partners of unequal social status). This gesture is linked to Edwin Hall’s engagement/sponsalia-focused reading and to Margaret Carroll’s emphasis on a legal/secular context. However, the National Gallery’s current framework avoids fixing the scene as the official record of a single ceremonial “moment.” Therefore, the hand gesture is not decisive but a debated element.
Interior: Realism and Symbolism
The Arnolfini Portrait is often praised as a masterpiece of the “realistic interior.” But is this realism influenced by the medieval habit of giving visible objects allegorical or symbolic meanings?
Panofsky argued that “as in Jan van Eyck’s other works, medieval symbolism and modern realism are so perfectly reconciled that the former has become an inherent element of the latter.”
In his 1934 article, Erwin Panofsky first introduced the idea of “disguised symbolism” for Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. According to Panofsky, many everyday objects in the scene were chosen to add layers of meaning to the sacrament.
The single burning candle in the chandelier shows that the room is not an ordinary parlor but a nuptial chamber (a bridal or marriage room). It is a marriage candle, suitable for making an oath, and a reference to the “all-seeing wisdom of God.”
The oranges on the windowsill carry a double meaning. They signal wealth and luxury, and they also have an iconographic link to the fruit of Eden.
The pattens (clog-like overshoes) set aside on the left suggest holy ground. By hinting at the sacredness of the threshold (the Old Testament echo of “Take off your shoes”), they raise the religious value of the place where the vow is made.
The dog represents fidelity (in marriage). This is why it traditionally appears at the feet of husband and wife on tombstones.
The paternoster beads (an amber rosary) show the household’s piety and strengthen the idea that “God is witness” to the agreement.
The red bed and curtains evoke the medieval notion of the thalamus (bridal chamber). They present the bodily and legitimate union of marriage in an honored setting.
The small statue on the wooden chair at the back left is probably Saint Margaret (the patron saint of women expecting childbirth), and it highlights the sacramental associations of the setting. It affirms the hope of children expected from marriage.
According to Panofsky, these elements are not obvious symbols or attributes directly attached to a figure; rather, they are signs disguised as everyday objects. The symmetrical placement of the objects and the sculptural stance of the figures make the whole arrangement mysterious and lead the viewer to look for hidden meaning in every detail.
For a medieval viewer, the little dog and the candle are signs of faith and fidelity; even the wooden pattens on the floor could recall the phrase, “Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
However, Panofsky warns that these associations should not be forced as if decoding a secret message. He says Van Eyck builds his landscapes and interiors on a perfect middle ground between reality and symbol. In this way, medieval symbolism and modern realism do not clash; symbolic meaning melts into reality and becomes a natural flow of associations that arise from reality itself. Thus medieval symbolism does not conflict with modern realism; the first is absorbed into the second. Reality becomes a natural source of rich associations.
Today Panofsky’s approach is not the mainstream view. In current literature it has explanatory, not evidential, weight. Infrared reflectography (IRR) (NG Technical Bulletin 16, 1995) shows that “iconographic” elements such as the dog, the chandelier, the rosary, and the pattens were added late without underdrawing, and that there were many revisions to the figures’ poses. These findings weaken the idea of a single, fully planned “program of symbols” from start to finish.
A Painting’s Long Journey The painting’s journey after it was made is also interesting. In the sixteenth century, it belonged to Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands. From there it entered the Spanish royal collection. Later, during the Peninsular War (1807–14) in Spain, it appears in the possession of the Scottish officer James Hay. It is not known how Hay acquired the painting; however, he brought it to England. In 1842, the National Gallery bought it for 600 guineas, a price considered “reasonable.” It then became the first Dutch/Flemish painting in the Gallery.
The Appearance of Reality, the Plurality of Meaning
In conclusion, the Arnolfini Portrait is read not as a single, closed “record of a ceremony,” but as a representational double portrait rich in symbolic associations. Even so, the hand gesture, the inscription on the mirror, and the late addition of some objects keep the painting open to more than one interpretation. Van Eyck combines a convincing appearance of reality with social prestige and measured piety, inviting the viewer to reflect on the details.
Referances:
National Gallery
Jan van Eyck'in Arnolfini Portresi, Erwin Panofsky, The Burlington Magazine, 1934
Dr. Lane Eagles, The Arnolfini Portrait, Smart History
Benjamin Binstock, Why Was Jan van Eyck here?, https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/
Lorne Campbell, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1998, updated 2021
Margaret D. Carroll, "In the Name of God and Profit": Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait
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