Mini Pose #1

Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

The Arnolfini Portrait  (Arnolfini Marriage) is an oil painting on the oak panel, depicting the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna Cenami, daughter of an Italian banker, holding hands in the bedroom of their home in Bruges, which is the most important trading center in Duchy at that time. The Arnolfini Portrait showcases the contribution of Jan Van Eyck to the naturalism of the Northern Renaissance School. 

Jan Van Eyck uses geometric orthogonal perspective skillfully shows the details of the chamber, and the highlight of the convex mirror on the rear wall reveals more details of the room and expands the space of the room. 

While the woman’s robe trimmed with ermine fur give them a sense of luxury, the arrangement of the room and the austere furniture in the restricted-sized chamber indicate their bourgeois rater than noble status. Also, the placement of the two figures suggests the conventional fifteenth-century views of marriage and gender roles. The woman stands next to the bad, suggesting her in a domestic role. However, the man stands near the open window symbolic of his role in the outside world. In the center of the picture, we can see his vertically raised hand, and the man holds his wife’s limp hand in his palm. Those poses give him a sense of commanding and authority, whilst his wife has her hand in a lower horizontal, more submissive pose.