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The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait: Interpretations

Decent Essays

Jan van Eyck’s work, The Arnolfini Portrait, is a famous piece of Flemish portraiture with a lively history of interpretation (Hall xviii). Most interpretations of the work hinge upon the symbolism found in the iconography of the work, while others rely upon the presumption that the work is nothing but masterfully rendered naturalism, while still others apply various modern art history methodologies. In this paper I will provide a brief survey of the leading interpretations and methods that have been applied to the Arnolfini Portrait.
One cannot review the analysis and historiography of the Arnolfini Portrait without encountering some sort of rehearsal of Erwin Panofsky’s reading of the work in his book Early Netherlandish Painting. …show more content…

Before Panofsky, even the National Gallery of London, the home of the work, was uncertain as to the subject of the portrait. Panofsky’s interpretation rests in part on the inscription above the mirror behind the couple, which says “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic,” or “Jan van Eyck was here”. Because of the stylized scripts and the assertion that the artist who painted the wedding was present to it, Panofsky and others have made the argument that the work is nothing less than a signed, notarized wedding portrait (Farber).
Besides allegorical interpretations, some scholars have pointed to naturalism as the prime window through which this work should be viewed. This view sees van Eyck as attempting to depict the scene completely naturally, or in all of its total, unembellished glory. For example, Carrier quotes Ludwig Baldass as saying of the mirror behind the couple: “The convex diminishing mirror is there in order that the whole of the room may be seen Convex mirrors are always round, for which reason the roundness in this case is not to be interpreted as a symbol of the world. Stated in another way, the mirror is there to show everyone the entirety of the event, including the witnesses, leaving no allegorical description necessary. The same naturalism

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