Day 9/10: Most famous works of art

The Arnolfini Wedding

by Jan van Eyck
wikipedia.org

The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early
Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It is also known as The Arnolfini Wedding, The
Arnolfini Marriage, The Arnolfini Double Portrait or the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and
his Wife, among other titles.
The painting is a small full-length double portrait, which is believed to represent the
Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and possibly his wife, presumably in their
home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the more original and
complex paintings in Western art because of the iconography, the unusual geometric
orthogonal perspective, the use of the mirror to reflect the space, and that the portrait is
considered unique by some art historians as the record of a marriage contract in the
form of a painting.
According to Ernst Gombrich "in its own way it was as new and revolutionary as
Donatello's or Masaccio's work in Italy. A simple corner of the real world had suddenly
been fixed on to a panel as if by magic ... For the first time in history the artist became
the perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term".
Signed and dated by van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist
and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in
oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London
in 1842.