Arnolfini Portrait

1434
Jan van Eyck painted this portrait of an Italian merchant and his wife. The room is a reception room, not a bedroom. Reception rooms so commonly included a bed that in 1445, French ambassadors to Henry VI remarked upon the unexpected absence of a bed in the king’s reception room.¹ Records of Arnolfini indicate that he lived in Bruges.
The National Gallery

Connection to Website Themes

Spousal Power Dyanmics: The downward glance of Arnolfini’s wife shows deference to her husband. The outward direction of Arnolfini’s gaze clearly indicates that upon entering the reception room, the husband leads the wife in this social situation. Earlier historians argued hypotheses that the painting depicts a marriage or betrothal, but modern art historians reject that in favor of a non-narrative interpretation of the scene as simply a portrait of the married couple.

Community Social Norms: The museum’s catalog webpage for this painting explains that the objects in the room, such as the oranges and brass chandelier, indicate significant wealth but carefully avoid copying displays of wealth associated with the aristocracy.² This reflects the intense social pressure imposed on the bourgeois elite to not contest the power of the nobility.

Church and State: Rosary beads hanging from the wall next to the mirror indicate the presence of religion in the lives of the couple. However, the lack of religious iconography reinforces the main point of the portrait as a depiction of the material situation of the merchant class.

What is Love: Any viewer attempting to locate feelings of love or affection between the couple must rely on the delicate way that they hold hands. Otherwise, no emotional history appears present in the depiction. Arnolfini’s wife holds bunched up clothing over her belly and does not appear pregnant according to the conventions of representation at the time.