19 Dec Unlocking Van Eyck's 'Arnolfini Portrait', an Engimatic Masterpiece

Source Credit:  Content and images from Artnet News.  Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/van-eyck-arnolfini-portrait-facts-2577228

No, reader, this is not a centuries-old painting of a shotgun wedding. Despite appearances, the woman in green is not believed to be pregnant. Art historians, in truth, have not come to many conclusions about this elusive portrait.

Centuries after northern Renaissance artist Jan van Eyck painted Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini (?) and his Wife (1434), better known as The Arnolfini Portrait,  there are still many unanswered questions about this oil on panel, which numbers among the most famous paintings in the world. The identities of these figures remain dubious, for starters. Scholars are still debating who we are looking at exactly (this is why there’s a question mark in the painting’s title). The woman, meanwhile, is unnamed. Was she a woman named Costanza Trenta, possibly, or another named Giovanna Cenami? Jury’s still out. If she is Giovanna, now the leading theory, then an interesting twist: Giovanna’s family was wealthier and more prominent than the Arnolfinis. That would make this an image of Giovanni “marrying up.” (That didn’t help any in immortalizing her name since she’s remained, anonymously, the “wife of.”)

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434). Collection of the National Gallery, London.

What we do know, though, is that this is a snapshot of the powerful Italian expat community living in the thriving Belgian city of Bruges in the 14th century. The ports of Flanders became important centers of trade in the medieval era and attracted merchants from all over Europe, including Italy. This couple alone represents the three biggest non-Florentine banking houses active in Bruges at the time: the Cenami, Rapondi, and Guinigi families (all native to Lucca). The skilled and detail-obsessed Van Eyck found favor among Bruges’s Italians, who commissioned him to paint portraits and altarpieces.

While there’s much we still don’t know about this panel painting, here are three things we do.

1. The Biggest Sign of Wealth? It’s This Juicy Detail 

Orange you glad we pointed this out? Detail from Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage.Images/Getty Images

Of all the blingy signifiers of wealth in this painting—the chandelier, fur-lined robes, stained glass windows, and rug, among other expensive things—one is hiding in plain sight. It’s the citrus.

An orange is perched on the windowsill on the left, with three more on the chest below. These oranges would have been imported from a land far, far away since the climate in northwestern Europe isn’t ideal for growing citrus. Flemish towns, and Bruges in particular, were the 14th-century hub of overseas trade with the Mediterranean—bringing in spices and Mediterranean fruits (including oranges, pomegranates, grapes, and figs).

When costly oranges arrived in Bruges, they weren’t sold in markets with the run-of-the-mill fruit but rather at apothecaries and pharmacies. Only the elite could afford them. An account from the Duke of Lorraine’s residence in the northern Netherlands from 1410 mentions the purchase of pomegranates and oranges from local apothecaries. The cost of four oranges alone (the amount we see here, also reflected in the convex mirror) was around 8 guilders—more than a month’s salary for a master carpenter.

The interior panel depicting Eve holding an orange from the Ghent Altarpiece at the Museum of Fine Art in Ghent, Belgium. Photo by Didier Messens/Getty Images.

In addition to this painting, Van Eyck painted oranges as opulent specimens in the Ghent Altarpiece (1432), where Eve holds a small citrus fruit on an outer panel and, in the lower register, citrus trees appear in a Jerusalem landscape.

2. He Wants to Hold Her Hand, But Why?

The focal point of this painting, and possibly a key to unlocking its meaning, is the joining of his and her hands. But what’s going on in that somewhat awkward gesture?

His left-hand grasps her right, but the traditional marriage handclasp gathers two right hands. One exception would be a morganatic marriage (a marriage between people of unequal social status, where the bride doesn’t acquire inheritance rights), but Arnolfini and Cenami were social equals, so that doesn’t make sense here. Another tradition that could explain the left-right handclasp is a “clandestinum matrimonium” which was for many different kinds of marriages, including one where the couple married privately before a judge or chaplain instead of publicly at the door of the church.

The awkward hand-holding gesture from Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage.Images/Getty Images

On the other hand, it could be part of another tradition entirely. An archival document discovered in the early 1990s revealed that Arnolfini and Cenami didn’t wed until 1447—meaning this could be a betrothal scene, not a wedding. Arnolfini’s active hand holds Cenami’s passive palm open, facing the viewer, in what may be an illustration of an Italian custom called impalmare (from the word palma) where the groom touched the right palm of his betrothed as a vow (an early phase of the marriage arrangement process). The moment we see here might be of Arnolfini presenting his future wife to the viewer, right after touching her right palm.

Or this could be part of another medieval Tuscan wedding ritual. After male members of the two families negotiated the marriage’s dowry and financial terms, the groom went to the bride’s home during daytime hours to bring her a ring (this was called Ring Day). He’d then escort the bride to his home. The painting could be a depiction of Ring Day because it’s midday and his left hand seems ready to lead her away to his home, which might also explain why she’s gathering her dress as though getting ready to go somewhere. The placement of their shoes suggests this is her home, not his—Arnolfini’s shoes are in the foreground, as though he’s just entered as a guest, while hers are in the back.

3. The Portrait Immortalizes a Fashion That Didn’t Last: Pattens

Detail of pattens, a popular shoe at the time, as seen in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait

About those shoes. Like medieval versions of Dr. Scholl’s beechwood clog sandals, these slip-ons were called pattens and they provided detachable platform soles helpful for walking on cobbled and unpaved roads. Shoes of that era were often made with silk and a thin leather lining and didn’t have protective soles, so pattens were worn as overshoes while outside and removed once indoors. The long, pointy shapes of pattens imitated the shapes of the shoes, as seen here with Arnolfini.

While some pattens have survived the test of time and are conserved by museums as fashion history specimens, they’re best preserved in paintings—and this portrait provides an unusually prominent and detailed view of them. Arnolfini’s wood and leather pattens are seen from multiple angles (and slightly caked in mud) in the left foreground, while Cenami’s more festively colored and bedazzled red ones are in the back by a prayer bench.

A patten very similar to Arnolfini’s can be seen in the left foreground of the Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes (another work commissioned by an Italian expat living in Bruges, banker Tomasso Portinari). And pattens can be seen on a man wearing them outside in the Invidia (or ‘envy’) section of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things attributed to Hieronymous Bosch.

Source Credit:  Content and images from Artnet News.  Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/van-eyck-arnolfini-portrait-facts-2577228