The Arnolfini Portrait, By Jan van Eyck

hi welcome to stories of art my name is Carel Huydecoper and today I'd like to tell you the story of the painting known as the Arnolfini portrait it's a painting by Jan van Eyck and this was made in 1434 and it is in the National Gallery in London now those are just about all the facts that I can actually tell you about it that are undisputed because so much of this painting we don't know for sure I'm going to tell you the story about it and I will discuss the various theories that there are surrounding what we are actually looking at because in this painting as you will see it is filled with all these little details that seem like tantalizing little clues as to what we are actually looking at and I will go through the main theories as I said and of course when I do that I will also give you the various answers to the question of whether or not she is pregnant and it will surprise you probably but there's more than two possible answers to that question now I'll get out of the way and let's have a closer look at it now when you look at this painting it is of course this lovely double portrait two people that are just standing in this room and it's easy to forget that this is a first in history there had never been anything like this before there are no earlier double portraits set inside an entire architectural architectural setting like this you see the entire room and it's filled with all kinds of different elements now the main theory that has been around for ages is that what we see here is a wedding ceremony two people are getting married we think that because they hold hands and he holds up his right hand as if he's promising something as if he's swearing to something making an oath and there are more clues to that that it might be a wedding that in this room there is in the background on the wall and as I zoom in you will see it more clearly there's this signature of Jan van Eyck who in this case called himself Johannes de Eyck as far as I know this is the only painting where he signed his work inside the painting it is usual for him to have his name on the frame and in the at the time at the in the15th century it wasn't usual at all for artists to to sign their work Jan van Eyck was famous enough to do that but he did it and he did it prominently in the center of this painting it is also very strange to see that this is not any signature because it says his name Johannes de Eyck but after that it says Fuit Hic which means in Latin was here instead of the more usual thing to say Johannes de Eyck made me it also says the date 1434 so that's a pretty strange way to say that he was there almost as if he was a witness to something and that may be the reason why if we look at the mirror just below it there you see the the couple you see the the man and the woman getting married from the back and then if you look closely you see there's two more people in the room pretty much standing wherever we are when we zoom out and where the audience of this scene and the very fact that there's a witness to something in fact to helps us to think that this is actually a marriage ceremony of course I also have to tell you there were no formal ceremonies for weddings there were no traditions in in the sense that we have today you could just shake each other's hand and say we're married now you didn't have to go to City Hall you didn't have to go to church you didn't have to register it anywhere at all it's just something you could just decide that you were so we also don't exactly know what a wedding usually looked like we do know that people didn't get married in white yet women didn't get married in white that's a 19th century thing so the fact that she's in green doesn't mean any thing now as I said you could get married just by agreeing between yourselves that you are married but it was of course advised by everybody to have witnesses and to write it down somewhere otherwise you could get into some sort of conflict later on about whether or not you were married at all and of course it looks as though we have a witness here within the the signature that says Johannes de Eyck was here and it says the year and we can actually see the witnesses in the in the mirror actually we might also be able to tell what time of year it was so we can narrow down what time of year this wedding took place and that is if you look outside we can see a glimpse of the outside world through the window window by the way that only has has glass in it at the top and it doesn't have it at the lower end and the whole thing is open telling us that it's a fairly warm day and outside we see that there's a a tree that has fruit and usually people say that these are cherries now I happen to disagree with that I think these are small apples I say that because I think the leaves look more like apple tree leaves and I think the color of the fruit is more like red apples and less like the purple of cherries now who cares you might think well there is a slight difference cherries can be picked in the late spring and early summer whereas apples ripen at the end of summer or actually in the fall you can pick them all the way up to the end of October well I would prefer that it's that they're apples for one simple reason that there's oranges on the windowsill and the thing is oranges of course you can pick starting in September all the way through the fall therefore you can have ripe apples and oranges at the same time but you could not possibly have oranges and ripe cherries at the same time so if you ask me they are trying to tell us that this wedding took place in the fall now as I go through this painting I will be discussing all these little details that are in this painting because they seem to be clues about what these people were about and you have to imagine that nothing in this painting is here by accident because it wouldn't be it's not a photograph there will never be a moment where someone left something in the background by accident everything is there on purpose that doesn't mean that everything you see has some particular meaning that we can determine some things maybe they're just for show just to make up for the composition just to have an element somewhere so it's not too empty but you also have to remember that because it's a painting in all likelihood this setting never actually existed as we see it right now Jan van Eyck may have been present at their wedding at the moment that these two people said that they were getting married or were married but he didn't paint them at that moment because making a painting like this takes months and it's very very painstaking work he couldn't possibly have done it on the spot what most likely happened is that he portrayed both of these people they sat for him at a different moment he made drawings of their faces and they decided together on all the details that would be in this painting how they would be standing what they would be wearing what what furniture would be where and simply decided on all the details and on probably what they meant to them because this is a very personal and intimate painting and that gives us a problem when we try to interpret it because we don't know of all of these elements in the room what they mean because well let me give you a little example there's a dog there at their feet and one of the things many many people say to me is that dogs they're symbols of fidelity so this must be a wedding and I honestly I don't know where people get that because that's not what symbols are symbols symbols are a little bit more complicated than that a symbol is something that has a fixed meaning for instance a crucifix a crucifix is this symbol of Christianity in whatever context you will find it it is a reference to Christianity nothing else in our culture that is but a dog is not a symbol like that you see dogs all the time without thinking about fidelity and in fact I see dogs in paintings all the time without them having anything to do with fidelity for instance here's a dog he tries to scare off a man approaching a woman nothing to do with fidelity here's one standing on a table eating from a pie I would certainly say that that's not a symbol of fidelity and here are two in a brothel behaving as if they're in a brothel again no fidelity in fact I don't know of any painting where dogs represent fidelity dogs can be loyal can be obedient it can be watchful they can be misbehaved there's all kinds of things that dogs can be and one of the things is that they're obedient to their masters but that's something very different from fidelity now you might say that showing you these dogs just isolated is kind of silly because it takes them out of context and then what can you tell about them and that's actually precisely the point it's all about context if you see a dog in a painting there's not a fixed meaning that you will see you will see a dog behaving in whatever manner the the painter wanted it to and there will probably be a correlation to what the entire painting wanted to say because it's all about the context in this case this painting was made in Flanders and Bruges in the 15th century and this dog is a specifically Belgian breed it is actually an early version of what today would be called a Brussels Griffon and they were typical for Flanders perhaps these people actually had a dog like this one and when they got married they said this dog is part of our family it has to be in the painting it doesn't have to say anything about the relationship between the two people maybe it simply says we're in Flanders because one of the things we often say is that these two people are Italian and that brings me back to the oranges that we've seen before you don't find oranges in northern Europe they were imported from the south Bruges was was one of the trade capitals of Europe at the time it was immensely wealthy and there were expats from all over Europe actually all over the world that lived in Bruges and had their businesses there one of the things that many Italian businessman did those import oranges on the side simply from the orchards of their family they would ship them over to the north and they were quite valuable because these are very tasty and vitamin rich fruits that people could eat at the end of the fall all the way into winter and that was pretty rare in in northern Europe so the fact that you see oranges here may allude to the fact that they might be Italian or southern European anyway and the fact that you see that combined with a typically Flemish dog may just tell us that they're Italians in Flanders there are also some indications that people gave oranges as presents during wedding but the references to that are from at least a century after this painting was made so we're not so sure that applies here and if they were Italians that would be a bit strange to give them oranges now there are more details here of course to to discuss if we look at her side and look behind there you can see that there's a piece of furniture probably a bench a wooden bench with a back and on that back you can see this little sculpture and the little sculpture is of a saint called st. Margaret and st. Margaret is an is an early Christian martyr her story is she was in a in a cell at some point and during the night in the dark she was tormented by something and so she she prayed to God to show her what it was the Tormentor and suddenly in front of her appeared this large dragon the dragon ate her and she spent time in his belly praying I suppose she spent three days there because these things are always done in periods of three days and then his belly bursts open and she stepped out what she did then is she took a broom that she apparently had in her cell and she swept out the remains of the dragon and we know as I said little about marriage at the time but one thing that we know from well a little later in the 15th century is that there was this tradition where people would once they got married a woman would then take a broom and sweep the stoop or the the area just in front of the front door of a house thereby showing the neighborhood that they were married that meant that when she lived together of course and you're married if you're unmarried the devil is in the house once you get married you have swept the devil out it also showed people that that the woman had taken over the household she was now the lady of the house I'm sure it's not an accident that there's a a broom just below st. Margaret it's most likely a reference to what's happening here a wedding and the custom of her sweeping out the devil but there's also this thing about whether or not she is pregnant there's of course on the one hand you could say yes she is pregnant because of her belly that's somewhat bigger and on the other hand you could say no because she's pulling up her clothing in front of her belly to appear pregnant because really even if she was pregnant at the time when they got married why would they put it in a painting it would be a scandal he could just paint her most pregnant but for some reason they decided to to enhance her belly and she she pulled up her dress in front of her belly to make it look much bigger and then of course there's the saint of midwives just behind her so it could be that she was pregnant could be that she was not pregnant could be that they wanted to get pregnant they're trying to show us they want to have children so those are already a couple of the the possibilities of whether or not she's pregnant and really it is up to the viewer I suppose to make out which one it is I'd love to see what you think about these things so please let me know in the comments what do you think pregnant or not pregnant there are of course many other pieces within this tiny little painting and I am not entirely sure of each and every one of them why they are there for instance if we return to the mirror as I said it's bigger than they actually made them at the time but there's a good reason for that because that way we can see the reflection and we can see what's happening there there's of course the two people getting married and there's the two well we say witnesses and we can see the rest of the room but if we look back just a little bit you can also see that there's these these little scenes painted in the side of the mirror that these are tiny tiny little paintings so incredibly small that Jan van Eyck must have used a very good magnifying glass even to make them and to make things even worse he painted them as if they're behind glass you can see a shimmer on them and you can even make out every scene that you see here the story line starts at the bottom there you can see a little man with a halo it's Jesus praying in the on the olive mount then the next scene I suppose is where Jesus gets arrested then the next one he's brought before Pilate and then there's one where he's when he's tied to a post and he's being well he gets beaten up and then you can see him here walking with the cross and on top in the top scene he's crucified he's taken off the cross just to the right and then one seems to the right and lower you can see his burial he's being brought through his tomb and then there's a scene that you don't often see in a cycle like this someone you can see Jesus or the risen Christ standing right here and there's two little figures in front of him I think that this is a scene from Matthew where where he goes down into purgatory and he rescues the souls of Adam and Eve then the next scene the last one is his resurrection there you can see him standing up in his tomb so it's it's an almost complete set of the passion set in these incredibly small scenes and then even next to the mirror you can see these little prayer beads that each of them give the reflections of the room it's it's absolutely magnificent how he painted all of this another detail that is pretty astounding is the chandelier his brass chandelier with all these different arms sticking out to all the sides and is made in perfect perspective which is fantastic as they didn't really know perspective in the north yet in fact this was made probably in the same year that mathematical perspective was invented in Florence So Jan van Eyck didn't know that but the perspective in this is so convincing what is strange about it though is that there's only one candle in it and that one candle is on because it's in the middle of the day why would any candles be burning and if you have burning candles why only one one of the theories about it and one I would subscribe to is that it was common for people who made a deal a business deal or a personal deal or would swear an oath or something like that that they would seal that well deal by going to church and lighting a candle together and maybe this is a reference to that now perhaps you have noticed that up until now I haven't actually said anything about the identity of these people I haven't mentioned their names I've told you that this painting is known as the Arnolfini portrait and when I went to university way back when it was pretty much universally accepted that these people were giovanni Arnolfini and his wife giovanna Cenami of course henceforth known as Arnolfini as well but that's an identification that was only made in 1857 at that time of course the painting was already 400 years old and before the discovery I'm about to tell you about it was known as a self portrait of Jan van Eyck and his wife his wife happened to be called Margaret which fits in lovely with her name Saint which is placed right beside the head of the woman but in 1857 it was found out that there was this this inventory of Margaret of Austria who had ruled the Netherlands in part of the 16th century and in her inventory there's a mention of a painting by Jan van Eyck describing a wedding of giovanni Arnolfini that discovery was linked to this painting of course in the inventory there's not a picture next to the name of the painting but if you link to two together this could very well be that particular painting the wedding of giovanni Arnolfini it's important to remember that when that inventory was made the painting was well over a century old so all the people involved in the creation of this painting had been dead for quite some time so there was no one who could say yes of course that painting is Giovanni Arnolfini no one could recognize him anymore but it did seem to fit nicely with with what we're seeing here because Giovanni Arnolfini was a known expatriate he was from a wealthy family in Lucca and he worked for his family's firm in Bruges and he spent most of his life there his wife Giovanna Cenami also came from Lucca and several of her family members also lived in Bruges with her and so it's not that strange that the two got married we know they got married and so well seems like a done deal we know that this is Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna or Jeanne as she is known we even have her death certificate we know when she died in 1480 which fits nicely with the timing of the whole thing so everyone henceforth pretty much thought this has to be Giovanni Arnolfini and then in nineteen first in 1994 and then in 1997 several different discoveries were made in the archives in Bruges now one of the discoveries made in the 1990s was that there wasn't just one Giovanni Arnolfini who lived in Bruges there were actually two of them one was called Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini and the other was called Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini there were cousins and these extra names were their father's so they were just there to distinguish them one from the other they knew each other there were friends were hung out in the same circles were both expats and worked for the same company so we know there's two Arnolfini who lived in Bruges at the same time and it really could be either one of them in this painting but the real interesting thing came in 1997 where through a chance discovery we found out that neither one of these Giovanni Arnolfini were married in 1434 one of these discoveries was a mention in another inventory where someone had given gifts to giovanni Arnolfini for his wedding to Giovanna Cenami but that inventory was dated in 1447 and that is 13 years after this painting had been made by that time Jan van Eyck had died so it couldn't possibly be that he was there and that pretty much rules out that this Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna so that leaves us the other Giovanni Arnolfini could he have been in this painting but the thing is we know that he had been married to Costanza Trenta before 1434 in fact she had died in childbirth in 1433 so what does that mean well one one thing could be that there's no Arnolfini in this painting at all these are completely different people a more recent idea is that this is actually not a wedding portrait but a tribute made for Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini for his wife who had died a year before and in some ways that idea makes sense it would explain why nobody is happy in this painting which you would sort of expect in a in a wedding portrait he may be promising something to her he may be promising to love her beyond death and that would also mean the references to pregnancy and childbirth that are there and have a completely different meaning it would also explain that one burning candle that could be a prayer for her soul and her candle is out it's of course much less cheerful painting and then it would have been if it were a wedding portrait so actually it is possible it could be all of these different interpretations and we can't be really sure which one it is now there are no definitive answers to anything that we see in in this painting or the questions that we that it raises we might find new documentary evidence there may be new theories on the horizon and we will may come up with something completely different and that's because it's so difficult to compare to anything else well so far it's impossible to compare to anything else because we have no other painting like it from the same period in the meantime though we can see into the lives of these people that we see in this painting and we can imagine what their lives were like and see some of the clues around them and whether this is a a tribute painting or actually a wedding of two people we are almost invited to join in these lives that they lived some six hundred years ago now I would love it if you would give your opinion in the comments below whether or not you think she's pregnant or which of the two things you think it is it's it is it a tribute is it a a wedding and of course if you like the story give us a like and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already in any case I hope you enjoyed all this thank you for watching and see you next time bye

Channel: Stories Of Art

Views: 24,833

Keywords: arnolfini, arnolfini wedding, portrait, stories of art, carel huydecoper, is she pregnant, giovanna arnolfini, Jeanne Cenami, jan van eyck, jan van eyck painting, bruges, brugge, expats in brugge, expatriots in bruge, vlaamse primitieven, flemish primitives, van eyck, greatest paintings of all time, greatest painting, national gallery london, 1434, art, arthistory, art history, history, renaissance, northern renaissance, fine art, fineart

Id: 7MuKXJIvSK4

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019