There is something magical about the portrait of the Arnolfini family. It's impossible not to stare at it, not to look at the two people who are its subject, and at the richness of detail surrounding them. I first experienced this feeling quite some time ago, in black and white reproductions, and then in colour ones.
But nothing prepared me for the face-to-face meeting with the two Arnolfinis, in a smaller, almost intimate room at the National Gallery in London. First of all, I always thought the painting would be quite big, in any case bigger than its (approx) 80 x 60 cm. The depth of detail, probably because of the size, is even richer in real life than in reproductions. It stands surrounded by other masterpieces of the Flemish school, an ethereal presence which is, in the same time, very much of this earth, showing a couple in their house, surrounded by their expensive possessions.
Even with so many studies written from the mid-19th century on, the meaning of this painting is a mystery. Does it show a civil wedding ceremony? Is the woman pregnant? Does the painting really show Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna Cenami?
One of the interpretations I enjoyed is that brought by Erwin Panofsky in 1934 in a study published in Burlington Magazine (later on included in the volume Early Netherlandish Painting - which is sadly out of print in English but available in French). Panofsky argued that the painting represents a visual marriage contract. In those days, the presence of a sacerdote to legalise the union was not yet compulsory, and there existed a less formal civil ceremony that did not involve the signing of a contract but the utterance of a formula and the joining of hands. However, it seems that people who married this way, and especially those with properties and fortunes, were open to the threat of legal action from dissatisfied family members, especially if any of the parents objected to the match. As such, Panofsky saw the painting both a very expensive status symbol and a countersigned document, certified by the inscription "Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434" (Jan van Eyck was here).
A longer analysis, informed not only by a profound love for the painting but also by thorough learning and the advances in research and conservation technology, is provided by Carola Hicks's Girl in the Green Gown. Van Eyck's work and the context in which it appeared are analysed in depth, from the use of colours and the economic life of 15th century Bruges, to the meaning of objects, as well as an overview of the fashions and mores of the Burgundian court. Carola Hicks also traced the most probable road travelled by the painting during the centuries, from Bruges to Spain and from Spain to London, surviving perilous sea travel in the 16th century and travels by coach and cart during the Napoleonic Wars. And another journey by sea to England in the baggage of a Scottish soldier, Colonel James Hay, who sold it to the National Gallery in 1842.
On the advice of a good friend, I bought Ciaran Carson's Shamrock Tea, which is connected to the Arnolfini portrait in mysterious ways. I have just begun reading it, but I already like it well. The writer - also a very appreciated Irish poet - is very inventive, putting together short colour-coded stories that veer between memories, the lives of the saints and reality-bending experiences. The synopsis on the back of my second-hand paperback edition states that "Shamrock Tea, the magical substance that allows people to experience the world with visionary clarity, can only be found by passing through the great van Eyck painting into another world..." Curiouser and curiouser, as a character in the book says.
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