I remember my art history teacher going over many of these details and in the end saying "On the other hand if we had the opportunity to speak with the people involved in the painting they might just say 'Symbolism? No...the dog just knocked over the oranges and for the life of us we could never keep all the candles lit.'
@@theeastman9136 Yes, everything is deliberate but not everything has a deeper meaning other than ‘it looks good’ and I am not saying that’s the case in this painting but what my teacher was trying to instill in her students was a healthy skepticism of just assuming a classical interpretation of a work of art was the only interpretation. We misinterpret works of art in the modern age even when we have the artist themselves literally telling us what it’s about, there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t be any different with art hundreds or even thousands of years old!
@@GeekFilter I agree with you. As a photographer and artist, it took me years to decipher the actual reasons and intuitions behind great photographs. Sometimes beautifully accidental, sometimes mysteriously deliberate.
The "Jan Van Eyck was here" is my favorite part. It shows his personality in a way, maybe somewhat playful contrasted with the mastery of someone who you would expect to take everything in life too seriously.
@@QuantumLeap89 it’s easy to separate ourselves from people who lived long before us, especially famous people/people of history. We often put people like that on a pedestal which is why sometimes it’s a little jarring when they do something that reminds us that despite all the money, fame and prestige… they’re still just people. Age also has something to do with it. The sinking of the Titanic was tragic, but we aren’t devastated by it anymore. If it had occurred more recently than that would be a different story! Because it would be fresh in our minds. I hope that makes sense! Or at least that’s my opinion.
@@QuantumLeap89 Well thank you for your anecdotal life experience, I'll keep that in mind. However, we're talking about the 14th and 15th century here where artists *_weren't_* highly recognized and sought after just like theatre actors were on the lowest rung of the social ladder. A time where these talents and gifts were looked at as crafts like carpentry or pottery. The romantic arts have a history of going hand and hand with perfectionism, aka taking your work/life too seriously. Hope that answers your question.
Seeing this painting up close for the first time in the National Gallery caused tears to roll down my cheeks. I was astonished at how small it actually is. Van Eyck's brushes must have had only one bristle, two at the most.
@@bunnylarese2161 Ever since the internet was created people describe over-the-top emotional outbursts in response to things. Like "LOL". Does anyone really believe people are constantly laughing out loud, or rolling on the floor laughing, or laughing so hard their bodies are ejected into space or what-have-you? No. It's just that text requires a more...err...vibrant display of emotion in the hopes any emotion at all gets through.
I remember studying this in my Art History class, but I particularly remember it as an example of perspective. It really is interesting how both the ceiling and the floor can be seen together in such a strange angle. Everything is basically pointing toward the couple and, by extension, the mirror. It almost has sort of a “globe-like” or “orb-like” appearance, like that of a fish-eye lens, so as to allow for us to see more of the room. Quite interesting!
Perspective is violated in the painting. Flemish artist did not follow the standard practice of a single vanishing point. The floor, chandelier and figures are all out of perspective and there are multiple vanishing points.
Like someone else pointet out in the comments section "That it was most likely made using a very early and then secret technique of the pinhole camera"
@@speedomars it's not that they deliberately didn't follow rules of perspective and the single vanishing point, those rules of perspective were not known at that time, it was later that the idea of a single vanishing point was discovered.
@@KrissFliss yes I would agree with you they discovered the technic and had lots of fun with it , knowing 500years later is will drive thought's idiots in the future mad, with endless hours and debates
You may be interested to know Artist David Hockney RA investigated this work and came to the conclusion that it was most likely made using a very early and then secret technique of the pinhole camera, lenses were a then very new piece of science and were made in this area at the time. David's conclusion was that it would not be possible to drawn by eye many of the elements particularly the hanging lamp. You may be able to find the documentary where Hockney investigate this and other works which use perspective and other cutting edge inventions which pushed art forward, sorry though I cannot remember what it was called although a search around David Hockney and illusion/perspective may help you find it if interested.
David Hockney has a book called, "Secret Knowledge" which go into this is detail. You should watch the Documentary, "Tims Vermeer". its so interesting.
i find it so incredible to look at the faces of people who lived so long ago. to see their clothes, their expressions and to get an idea of how they lived. that in itself is priceless in my opinion.
I’ve always enjoyed this painting. I can remember past art teachers talking about it, and in junior high, a friend of mine did a watercolor painting of the mirror part only. She did such a fantastic job on it, I remember being so impressed by her talent. Then she gave it to me! And after all these years, I still have it. ❤️
I feel like he's honoring his beloved dead wife and in his grief and survivors guilt asking her if he can move on and be fruitful. He is a man who had a facial deformity and his wife loved him and he was deeply impacted by her love. Look at all that green he put her in and look at his face and think about how long he waited to remarry. He was rich, women were definitely after him... I'd bet the artist had sketched her face before she died.
Wow!!! How beautiful! Thank you so much for your explanation. So many people in these times forget that people are not simply logical, but deeply emotional beings and we make our choices based on emotions. More then than now. Beautiful story of love ❤
17 years ago I took an art history class in high school and I can honestly say this piece of art is the only one I vividly remember learning about. It always stood out to me and will forever be my favourite painting.
Same here, though I personally was far more drawn to Caravaggio and his groundbreaking use of lighting. I see a lot of his lighting techniques in modern film and graphic novels
Same. 20 years since I studied this painting in college. The biography I read said the artist had the same birthday as me and that he was left-handed. Neither of which I can confirm with a google search. I have a shockingly bad memory so his work clearly struck a chord for me to remember so much as his nickname.
I never would have known about all the symbolism in this painting. Really interesting to hear all the backstories and explanations! Although, I was really eager to hear what the imp-like statue in the back behind the woman's hand meant. Anyone have any thoughts on it?
After some research the figure praying over a dragon up on the bed post appears to be Saint Margaret of Antioch. The figures below by the woman's hand appear to just be European grotesques/chimeras. Super vague & intriguing possible use of symbols. What an enigma of art.
@@landonstenersen3401 the artist? Standing with another finished work leaning on the wall behind him? If you see the reflection in the top right of a window it doesn't correspond to the full length window in main scene and, if a second window out of shot, there is no way the orientation would leave main scene with out a second point of lighting.
That is so unbelievable how great certain people can paint. It blows my mind at how well, how realistic, and how detailed this painting is. How is it even possible for someone to be able to paint like that? So impressive!!!
It’s been solved! Cannot remember the author’s name bc I’m very old, but for my MA in art history I read a book that convincingly proved that the ptg portrays a couple’s engagement. Not a wedding, but proof of an engagement. It was painted for the two families to have concrete proof, since their merchant banking families lived in Italy.
This painting made a deep impression on me as a kid. They look so serious, but the man's hat is ridiculously big. I always assumed the lady was pregnant. And those shoes were crazy-looking and modern. You have pointed out even more fascinating stuff. Thanks!
The woman was not pregnant. And the wooden clogs were called “ pattens”. People wore them over their shoes, to keep their shoes free from the mud in the unpaved Medieval streets.
Yeah mine too Terri. An artist friend brought me a print back from a London art gallery years ago. I framed it. Still on my front room wall years later.
Terri, this is also if not my favourite painting, then definitely one of them. I think at first glance, the vibrant red and green and the fact that they are complimentary colours, really appeals to people. I lived in London for a year and during my lunch breaks would often walk over to see it at the national gallery. My brother-in-law absolutely loves to paint. He sits down in the basement for hours and does paintings of a variety of subjects and styles. He has taken great pleasure in doing his version of the masters like Van Gogh, Renoir, Klimt, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, etc. one Christmas Eve day l arrived at my sister’s home and the family were greeting me. My mother had said that l should see what Gregg was painting now. I said l wish he would paint Arnolfini and his wife and my mother said to go take a look. Yup, he had done the painting and l was blown away by how he virtually replicated that masterpiece!!! I was even jealous because l wanted the painting. It is larger than the original and l was in awe how he captured it all, from the figures to the chandelier to the mirror to the dog… just captured it beautifully. One day I’m going to ask him to do the painting for me. Naturally l would pay him. I wish you could see his rendition of this incredibly loved painting.❤️
@@wendycrawford1792 Wow!! That sounds amazing. Your brother is lucky to be so talented. I wish I had some artistic talent, but I can't even draw a stickman. His copy of the Arnolfini portrait must have taken ages...there's so much detail in it. I wish I could see it too. I also wish I could spend my lunch breaks looking at this masterpiece. You're so lucky to have been able to see it in person...I won't lie, I'm jealous.
I don't remember the exact dimensions of the painting, but just to drive home how painful detailed it is, this painting is roughly the same size as a standard sheet of paper. It's often depicted as much larger in popular media, but it's relatively quiet small.
I've actually never even seen this painting before, but it's now my favourite painting. What an amazing talent this man was and incredibly creative and thoughtful with the details and symbolism.
Every artist at this time-as well as before and after-used incredible amounts of symbolism in their work, bc the Art was supposed to tell viewers a story about the subject(s) portrayed....it was not produced to just look beautiful or interesting or whatever, as we saw with the dogs in the funerary figures. People who paid for the artwork demanded much more than that, combined with the status of being able to afford the works in the first place. Much of what was commonly known about the symbols portrayed when works were completed has been lost over the hundreds of years, and so art historians try to interpret the symbolism for us based on what is known about the artists and their subjects, as this woman has done.
I recall seeing this one before and seeing it again in an art history class I took. At a quick glance, it wasn’t a very eye catching piece for me (especially because I think the man is oddly posed). But if you look at it and take more than just a passing glance, that’s when you start to see all that insane detail that was put into it. It’s not the type of detail that stands out and smacks you in the face like the portraits with the detailed lacy collars. You have to REALLY look, like you did in this video, to see all the subtle detail he added. But it’s such crazy detail! I mean, who would do this?! Can you imagine the time it took him to paint all these little details like the reflection in the mirror, The depictions in the mirror frame, the hairs on the dog?! Truly a master of his craft! As for theory, I’m going with the it was his first wife and she was dead. Not just because her candle was out or because of the dog, but also because they’re both barefoot, he’s wearing black, their expressions and also his pose. The reason I never cared for this one at first glance was because I felt he was oddly posed and it’s mostly due to the position of his hand. It’s almost as if he’s trying to keep her at a distance or he’s saying, “No, that’s okay, I’m good…” It’s an odd gesture to make for a portrait with your wife. Her being dead already would explain that.
Calling Van Eyk a 'sucker' for detail hits below the belt. This painting was made possible by using lenses which began appearing in the 1420s. Vermeer lived next door to a lense maker.
@@victrola2007 My gut feeling is that the person who put this video together isn't educated enough to be talking on the issue. She got so many things wrong and missed others. Were I grading this, she would get a 75.
No lenses were used in making this painting. It is NOT a projection. ( early lenses had significant spherical aberration and would have resulted in distortion of the image ) There is nothing in the painting that can not easily be achieved using a perspective framework and the basic perspective tools available to artists in this timeframe.
I just discovered this channel and I am completely in love. You make me look at pieces in a way I wouldn't have before and make me fall in love with details unexpected. Thank you!
Hum, never looked at it that closely even though it was briefly covered in my art history class. But when I took the class, there was no internet and no wikipedia with a very large image of the painting to zoom into. Interesting. There's only one candle in the chandelier, and it's above his head. Where a candle would have gone above her head, it's completely burned away, just wax left on the holder. That's probably a metaphore for "she's dead now". I'm going to go with: it's a memorial painting. And the fact it's summer outside but they are wearing warm clothing is probably another metaphore for the coldness of death or of lonliness. The people seen in the convex mirror down the hall could mean something like he has friends but they are at a distance and can't take the place of his departed wife. (that's a stretch, but sounds good)
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video. The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now. But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later. This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances. It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting. And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter (I was there, or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret. This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling. The one thing that it truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat *it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning(, etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died. This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo or purgatory. This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman ion her death bed to the pregnancy, the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time. This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child. This is the meaning of this painting.
I've seen so many people describe this piece of art on RUclips but nobody does such an amazing job making you feel you are really there in front of the painting and just be in awe as you show and describe everything. This is an amazing video! Thank you so much for making this video
I remember seeing a Total History video about this piece. The dress, specifically. TH was shockingly honest in that one, actually hiring a team of dressmakers to recreate the dress, with methods that would have been available at the time. The woman presenter in the video got to wear the dress, and commented, “This is so heavy! If I don’t lean back, I’m going to fall over!” And, holding up the hem, leaning back… well, she certainly looked pregnant! Even though she most assuredly was not! Dyed wool must be ridiculously heavy. My double-layered velvet cloak is quite heavy… when I’m not wearing it
I heard of this painting first through an historical fashion minded video (to recreate the voluminous dress). It was a treat to learn about all the minutae, what people think it means and does not mean, and that mirror, and all sorts of little trivia, such as the ceremony for the wife to handle a husbands business.
When I was a child, I had a nightmare about this painting, I dreamt that there was human skull 💀 hanging from the hat, I thought there was something morbid about it, perhaps the dark lighting. Now as an adult, I admire the painting so much.
Certainly is incredible. Excellent overview, thank you! When you do the next version of this painting, can you elaborate a little more on the reflection of the inner mirror you started with? _A request! I would like to know more about what's there... of the two figures it would seem logical that one is the artist himself._
Her hairline is very far back, such as Queen Elizabeth had, and the women in her court were made to have. The man looks much poorer then the woman who looks extremely rich. The two figures in the mirror also have clothing made from bight cloths such as only the rich could afford and may be her attendants. No painter could afford those colours. The mans shoes are wooden outside shoes with heals to keep his feet out of the mud, and since he still has his outside hat on, it looks like he may have just arrived. I believe she is pregnant... I have fitted clothing on customers for about 16 years and there is no way that cloth would stick out that far, unless pregnant. As her shoes are off, and she is in her bedroom, it looks as if she may have got out of bed. Perhaps the man is a priest who gave her a blessing for her baby? I think it's very likely, especially as there are religious paintings around the mirror. The little dog is probably just her pet. There is no way the two are married. Like chalk and cheese. Also.. the painter did not make much effort painting the mans face at all; all the detail is for the important rich woman with the plucked or receding hairline.
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video. The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now. But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later. This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances. It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting. And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock was a disaster, so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. But it wasn't june, and this painting has no real seasons, just symbolisms. The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and that the woman was not a declassee and the child was not a bastard child, they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter did (I was there), or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory amd we do not really know if they married or not. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret. This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead decomposing face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling. The man feels as good as dead and this painting is a tribute to his beloved woman and child. The one thing that is truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child and mother. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat (it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning), etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died. This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions post mortem, because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo and their unwed mothers in purgatory. This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman, pregnant, to the woman on her death bed, to the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time. This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child. This is the meaning of this painting.
@@kachi2782 Thank you. What you are saying seems quite logical and perhaps more in keeping with someone who has studied this type of symbolism - have you?
@@AuntLizzie Thank you. My brother is an art historian and spent 25 years on this piece alone in documentation, research and travels, and this is just a little of his 300 pages thesis on this painting and of our long conversations about this extraordinary masterpiece. I am just a wild life vet but i have always liked this painting, because of all the questions it raises. I am usually not a big fan of this painter, but this painting is truly magnificent and fascinating.
This has been my favorite painting for some time, now. Altogether, each time I look at it, I end up staring at all the details. It's amazing. So are many of his other works. In his "Annunciation", when you look at the robe on the left, the texture and perception of depth are beautiful!
I love these late middle ages hyper detailed paintings. I think that in many ways paintings lost a lot when they only painted the face clearly, and then made the rest of the body and clothes into a blur.
This became my favourite painting as a teenager doing my art GCSE. Just fabulous. It was a real privilege to see it 20 odd years later at The National Gallery.
So interesting! In the background picture, it looks like the backs of the two main characters- the green dress with white headdress, his cloak and hat. Also, the bed and windows and oranges are in the background picture, it looks like.
I did a repaint of this painting when I was a kid. :3 I chose it because of how many details there were.. needless to say, I didn’t get many of the details in it.. and it looks well.. nasty. But it’s hanging on a wall and I’m still proud of trying to recreate this masterpiece! Chandelier and the bed board was so hard to paint..
I always turn these (possible) memento mori paintings sideways to see if the standing figure actually looks like the reference could have been lying down. She certainly looks like she might have been, with her head propped on a pillow, one arm across her chest, and the other being held up with the palm opened. Maybe the painting was started when she died, and finished a year later. The man's pose is the same as the one priests use today for giving a blessing, dunno if it was the same historically. Maybe the people in the doorway represent her parents, and he is letting them take her with his blessing? Did her parents predecease her? It just seems likely to me that it's a family portrait.
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video. The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now. But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later. This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances. It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting. And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter (I was there, or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret. This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling. The one thing that it truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat *it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning(, etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died. This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo or purgatory. This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman ion her death bed to the pregnancy, the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time. This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child. This is the meaning of this painting.
@@valeriemcdonald440 Thank you, and you're welcome, my brother is an art historian, he spent 25 years on this painting. That's all i remember about what he told me regarding this piece, but his thesis on it is about 300 pages. It is filled with symbols and riddles. He owns a very accurate copy of this painting in his house and when you stand in front of it, you feel like you are sucked into it. If you ever get to the met, go see it. To me it should be just as famous if not more than the monalisa.
@Kirsten Rohla Thank you Kirsten, i will have to ask my brother. I do otherwise have a copy of it, and if he allows me i will scan it and put it online.
@@kachi2782 Mainly in agreement with you. The man's hat is that of an abbé and too big for him. He is posed in giving a blessing and one of the 'witnesses' could have been the actual abbé. The woman's pose is indeed horizontal in how the muscles look. The fact that the rich man stands without shoes is part of the humility aspect of the scene and you are right that there is an air of heartbreak.
There's wax of a melted candle across the chandelier from the lit candle, above the woman's head. I believe it does mean she is dead. Edit: I love how you detailed the details of this. Subscribed! 🥰
Spirit dog. Maybe a reference to the lady already being dead? Like “I’ve been commissioned to paint this woman so I can’t remove her in my details so let’s remove the dog”
Wow! So much symbolism in this painting. Truly a masterpiece! It would have been lost on me had you not gone over all the "illuminating" details. 10/10 as always. As always, love your critique!
A very interesting painting! The details are phenomenal! My art history teacher mentioned that the hanging beads with tassel, the signature and the mirror was painted to symbolize a certificate, perhaps a marriage certificate.
It has been determined that she was indeed pregnant. She was holding up her dress yes, and likely died in childbirth. There are lots of other details supporting the woman is deceased that you absolutely missed, there are details and messages everywhere, but in order to understand them you need to be educated in not only literature, pop culture, and folklore to understand the symbolism. If you want a better, more indepth look at this painting look up the video by Waldemar Januszczak made for Perspective.
The very first time I saw the painting was in an old encyclopedia and seeing it made me wondered about how cool and well-done the painting is. The thing I never knew about the painting are the hidden details, since the book is limited. It's only this time I finally knew how much work and detail was in the painting. Amazing.
Jan van Eyck was really amazing and, along with Hieronymus Bosch, my favourite 15th century artist. They both moved away from religious paintings, which was the expected depictive art of the era, and began painting everyday things (apart from Bosch......Just......Look at some of his paintings). Of course, Van Eyck did paint things such as triptychs for Catholic cathedrals and chapels, but a lot of his works shed new light on ways of painting.
I've heard about this painting and the details but when you showed us the reflection in the mirror and zoomed out that made the painting all the more impressive.
So many questions, virtually endless: What was the dog's name? Why is the man wearing a hat indoors? Who was the other figure in the mirror with Van Eyck? What kind of potatoes were they? They look like russet: did Europeans have russet potatoes? Where did they buy the oranges, or are they tangerines? What tiny feet the man had, judging by the small shoes: what size were they and where can I order a pair? Was that broom on the bedside for brushing crumbs off the sheet? So much guessing, such a silly voice.
Wow, more interesting details & interpretations. We studied this painting in Art History & God's approval of marriage did seem to be the story of this beautiful artwork. Dogs also symbolized fidelity & loyalty. ("Fido") And possibly the gesture of the husband's raised hand too. Her taking his hand means she trusts & accepts his promise of fidelity. And vice-versa. The fruits symbolized fertility, "Go forth & be fruitful". As did the drape of her dress, alluding to a future pregnancy. The two onlookers in the mirror (possibly representing God's eye) appear to be pleased with this couple pairing, indicating an approved marriage. And then there's the removal of their shoes, the bed & the endearing but solemn way the two are looking at each other, possibly suggesting their wedding night. 💓💓 (Re the death aspect, the husband's dark clothing could indicate mourning & the loss of his wife. And even though her candle (light) above is extinguished, she's still colorful & vibrant. Suggesting rebirth in heaven; reinforced by her rounded belly.)
What strikes me as interesting is the fact the mirror doesn't depict reality. Other paintings with mirrors or images of the painter include the canvas and other painter tools. This mirror is depicting a vague interpretation of what would have been there is no canvas or painter was there. Very unusual.
There is something in the way the husband looks that seems rather pious. His dark clothing and the way his hand is held up almost seems like some movement a clergyman would make. An oath does seem probable as it's his right hand. It seems as though the painting, filled with detail as it is, is meant to showcase the wife. It's all so interesting isn't it?
Thank you so much! It took a while but it was lot of fun to make.
2 года назад
Probably one of the best explanations I've heard about this painting, and you made only 6 minutes! This needs to be longer, more details, everything you know! Please!
I have always admired this painting especially as others saying real life how small it is plus when a young man I was a draughtsman and was taught perspective for quite some time as well - so those skills I feel do give some basis for my respect for Jan Van Eyck. Now many years older and for the last three years taking up oil painting on a daily basis I know how incredibly difficult it is to control a brush with oil paint to get a fine line in the way Van Eyck does, plus the time for the paint to dry (days sometimes) so you can glaze over it, I now have so much respect and awe for this artist than ever before. Considering the absolute rubbish that so-called artists now call art when compared to this absolute genius and master of the brush, we have in fact declined in artistic skills. I have looked at a great number of paintings, especially 20th century years but as yet, no way does any of them match this man's skill.
Since art is the expression of the soul of a culture, I’d say that the rubbish we are now putting out in the name of Art shows that we’ve abandoned something much more precious than the art itself.
@@CSUnger Oh yes, I feel that so strongly, especially recently reading that in America a major art competition was won by an AI drawing machine. The same goes with films is that the emphasis is now all on the technology i.e. special effects and the impact it will give the viewer. Last night I watched the first two episodes of 'The Rings of Power' and they had the audacity to call it a Tolkien series. I accept on my 64" Smart TV some scenes did look good but the story line was boring as hell. No way did if have any soul, because at the heart of LOTR is the 'soul' of a great HUMAN writer, which to me is the same for an artist who in their paintings is going to reach out to us differently. For me, it is 'Nighthawks' by Edward Hopper because for some reason it triggers a very strong human response as it reminds me so much of when I was young hitch-hiking around the UK and Europe and many times being dropped off late at night outside road side cafés we had back in the early 1970s. Van Eyck is the master of that because not just in his unbelievable and some would say 'non-human' perspective, detail and artistic draughtsman skills but the mood and atmosphere of both the man and the woman whose expressions and how they stand just convey so much to the viewer. I began painting far too late (i.e. sadly ever achieving the skills I am only just learning to appreciate) but occasionally when I 'bore' people (LOL) who come to my house and view my work, their reaction and comments really (more so than all my other achievements in my life) absolutely delight me, as in the tiniest way they are giving me what you so rightly say is by so many so-called artists are abandoning.
I'm stunned at the fine detail on the black hat. That is something someone would have to get very close to even notice. Even small insignificant details are just fascinating. So, writing your name and 'I was here' is an ancient art. Nice.
I came across your channel very recently. Your explanation of paintings is extremely fascinating. I sometimes get lost into the storytelling because it's so absorbing. Could you try narrating on some paintings from India? There are numerous paintings of various kinds.
The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now. But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later. This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances. It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting. And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock was a disaster, so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. But it wasn't june, and this painting has no real seasons, just symbolisms. The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just legalizes the union and shows that the woman was not a declassee and the child was not a bastard child, they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter did (I was there), or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory and we do not really know if they got married or not. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret. This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead decomposing face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling. The man feels as good as dead and this painting is a tribute to his beloved woman and child. The one thing that is truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child and mother. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat (it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning), etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died. This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions post mortem, because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo and their unwed mothers in purgatory. This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman, pregnant, to the woman on her death bed, to the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time. This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child. This is the meaning of this painting.
Arnolfini and Van Eyck lived in Brugge (Bruges) in the then Burgundic Netherlands, not in Italy. Belgian cherries fruit end of June and July. Summers can be chilly at times over here. Especially in those times as it was in the little ice-age form 1300 to the 1800's. So I would not over-analyze their clothing. Not impossible they wore these in that season. At the same time it was also a medium to show of their wealth, even if it was in a understated way. Finally, your statement that it was a memento mori is absolutely right, and I don’t think many scholars would state otherwise. It remains a wonderful peace of art. I never saw it in real, but I had the privilege of seeing the Ghent altarpiece (Lam Gods) often when I studied there and I was almost able to touch the Virgin of the chancellor Rolin in the Louvre. Every time it is an out of time experience to be in the presence of the works of the founder of modern European painting.
@@taiqidong9841 According to other research it is also presumed that the portrait might have been painted in the Arnolfini residence in Lucca Italy., or painted as if Giovanni and his bride were in their residence in Lucca which Eyck visited. Arnolfini who came from the Republic of Genoa didn't live in Burges all year round, he moved back and forth between his homeland of Genoa and Bruges, which was just a place of business as the first stock exchange and also one of the most important maritime route at that time, due to its very strategic location. But Giovanni was filthy rich, and i mean insanely rich, he was THE jetsetter of his time, even if his jet were ships, in today's money he would have a fortune of hundreds of billions and needless to say he travelled intensively. Bruges was his headquarter and office, but he had residences everywhere and was friend to all the leaders of that time. Van Eyck and Giovanni were pretty close and had much more than a painter/subject relationship and Van Eyck visited Italy many times, like every artists of that time, due to Italy progressively becoming the heart of the renaissance. And the Arnolfini residence in Lucca had a magnificent Orangerie and many cherry trees. So it could be that the Painter might have been to the Arnolfini residence in Lucca, and this might also explain the Jan Van Eyck, I was there , message. Maybe he actually painted this on the wall of the Lucca residence. It is all open to suppositions. The more you try to understand this painting the more it gets complicated ! And also, it is a misconception that the region of Bruges was part of the Burgundian "Netherlands". It was actually part of the Duchy or Burgundy (in Flanders), ruled by, if i am not mistaken, Philip the good, or Philip the bold, or John the Fearless. They had such cool names ! Thanks for the comment.
@@kachi2782 Yes, ok, well, it's complicated innit. The name Burgurdian Netherlands is a normal way, here, in Belgium, to try to describe under witch master we served at that time (later on we had the Spanish Netherlands, the Austrian Netherlands, the French Netherlands, the DUTCH Netherlands (really) and than we stopped as we got independent and later on we skipped naming the era after the Fritz (twice !!!), but you get it, right?). Now, Van Eyck traveled a lot, in secret, that is, and so did Arnolfini (not in secret), but, you know,... the style of the furniture, the style of the windows... it is so very ... Brugge Anyway, You should come, It's a treat when you're into this. Remarkably well preserved. Awfully filled with tourists everywhere, but if it gets to you, you also have Gent (Ghent), Ieper, Antwerpen, like ten cities worth going to, really. And i'm not even talking about Brussels and the Walloon region... Anyway, doesn't matter. It was a great era, when Brugge and later Antwerpen (Antwerp) and after the Spaniards bastards won: Amsterdam, where the Manhattans of their time with all the vanitas you can expect. Nowadays, we probably should try Beijing to feel the same thrill, it's science fiction over there as I heard...
@@taiqidong9841 Your english is so good i had no idea i was talking to a Belgian. Then you certainly know better about the history of this area and era than i ever will. I am not a historian at all. On peut egalement parler en francais si vous le voulez. Je suis Islandais mais je vis en Suisse depuis quelques annees et j'ai fait une partie de mes etudes de medecine veterinaire en france (unfortunately, i really loathe this country) . J'ai visite la Belgique deux fois, c'est absolument magnifique, l'architecture est phenomenale. les Belges sont tres agreables et tout est a proximite . La region de Burgundy (Je ne sais pas si c'est Bourgogne en Francais car la Bourgogne me semble etre autre chose) etait vraiment le centre financier de l'europe occidentale pendant tres longtemps et ce n'est peut etre pas une coincidence que le centre financier et le quartier le plus riche de New York s'appelle Manhattan (un nom Hollandais). Pour ce qui est de Pekin, J'ai vecu assez longtemps en Asie, surtout au Japon (pres de 20 ans) et j'ai visite la chine plusieurs fois, et Pekin, Shanghai et Hongkong sont tres certainement des centres financiers tres important mais avec ces deux milliard d'habitants, la Chine ne pourra jamais etre un pays prospere, et la grande majorite des chinois vivent encore de la meme facon que leur parents et grand parents avant eux et ne ressentent absolument pas le progres economique de leur pays. Je pense que Bruges etait reellement le Manhattan de son epoque ou le Tokyo des annees 80 pendant la periode bulle, Etes vous d'origine asiatique ou votre screen name est en rapport avec une passion pour la Chine ? Si vous avez l'occasion de visiter la Chine, faites le, c'est vraiment un pays phenomenal avec une culture a laquelle pres de la moitie de la planet doit enormement, a commencer par le Japon, mais aussi le Moyen Orient, la Grece antique, la Rome antique. La chine, la Perse (Sumeria et Mesopotamie) , l'Egypte, l'Inde et les civilization sud americaines pre colombiennes (Incas, Azteques, Mayas) sont vraiment les 5 civilizations qui comptent le plus au monde a mon avis, les autres civilization n'auraient jamais existees sans elles et nous n'auriont probablement pas eu la Grece et Rome antique, et plus tard la Renaissance Italienne et Europeenne. Meme en tant que descendant de Vikings je dois m'incliner devant ces civilisations.
A great video. Thank you. How the panel came into the National Gallery is almost as mysterious as its subject matter. It was booty of a kind and was supposedly bargained for by a British/Scottish Colonel who was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo where it hung in the room in the hospital in Brussels in which he recuperated. The story is likely a fabrication and is VERY similar to that of how one of the panels for Bruegel's Seasons came into the possession of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The underdrawing shows many variations in the positions of hands and the original shape of the mirror depicting the Stations of the Cross. As we know from the stylus drawing of Cardinal Albergati with its colour annotations in Dresden, Van Eyck travelled to Antwerp to draw the sitter and then returned to his studio in Bruges to finish the portrait in oils - or rather pigmented glazes. I have loved this painting all my life. It is special to me. I do not believe it has ever been loaned for exhibition but I may be wrong.
This is now my favorite piece! I read about the underdrawing and should have included that in the video! From the sketch, it seems like van Eyck altered Giovanni Arnolfini's facial features quite a bit. Thank you for all of those great facts!
It was stolen like most pieces at the MET or the British Museum or the Louvres, etc, ... either by colonialists or by so called allies who saved europe from the nazi to make it theirs, etc, ...
This painting made me cry. I don’t know.. it’s just such an exceptional piece. That perhaps her candle 🕯 has burned out or perhaps the candle 🕯 is under the eyes of god.
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video. The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now. But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later. This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances. It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting. And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter (I was there, or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret. This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling. The one thing that it truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat *it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning(, etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died. This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo or purgatory. This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman ion her death bed to the pregnancy, the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time. This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child. This is the meaning of this painting.
@@Incus_Audio My pleasure. There are plenty more things to say about this painting. For instance the dog is not reflected in the mirror because it doesn7t exist, it only represents death.
I first saw this painting in a school textbook. Then decades later I stood in front of it at the National Gallery. It's an incredible piece of work and I always try to pop in whenever I'm in London just to see it again.
I am a medievalist and have used this painting for reference when I'm doing medieval arts. And I just learned more about this painting than I ever did in a book. Now I want to see it in person
The way you describe art infuses so much life into these paintings. I never knew I was so interested in art before I found your channel. Thank you for your work and wonderful explanations. I don't know if it means much, but I subscribed just now after binge watching several of your videos.
Great description and additional info about this painting that I wasn't aware of, and never had the opportunity to see the background in such detailed way, thanks! It is one of my favorite paintings since a watched it for the first time when I was only 8 years old in a book that belonged to my granny.
Can someone please explain why her hair looks like horns? It was something I had noticed, was this a normal style or symbolism? Because when she mentions the dog, the candle, and even the far away images near the painting that all seemed to depict death it kind of felt as if she was actually not human. Because apparently what I got from the video is that she isn't his first wife and people have no clue who she is supposed to be, kind of hinting that maybe there's still something more about her? Like what if she weren't human? Idk just a thought. I never knew I'd enjoy someone interpreting a painting and pointing out so much detail within it, I can see why it's so popular and this just became so fun and exciting for me.
They are called cornettes and they were a fashionable hairstyle at the time! I see what you're getting at because there's no reason an artist who enjoys symbolism couldn't put that into his personal work but remember despite the mystery, this is a painting someone paid for, I'm not sure a commissioner in this time period would appreciate the artist painting him holding hands with something inhuman or demonic.
I always remember how I felt kinda unnerved when I saw this painting for the first time in middle school. Idk, something about it still causes me to feel a bit uneasy whenever I see it.
before we had photographs, we had paintings and anonymous is the greatest artist ever, but this story is different from the idea that some of us are born artists and others don't leave a thing when they die. Belisa Barca has painted this one and I was her two lives ago ... forget everything you know about reincarnation because EVERY LIFE is a different story and remembering being Belisa happened under the worst conditions ever, which is the subject of my current life. Belisa Barca was born Isabella van Kleef (Katharina van Kleef was her mother, but Belisa never knew her mother and lived with her father in Brugge). 'De dokter is de dood' is the real title of this one and that's what I heard when my nephew showed me the painting in a book, he got as a Christmas present, months before I had the experience of being Belisa again. Dutch is my mother tongue and Flemish was hers, when Belisa was 4 or 5 years old, her father (Petrus X - Portrait of a Lady) asked his friend, Raphael Barca, to take her away from the situation and find a good family for her. Raphael took her to his Italian friend, Nicola Salieri, near Sienna and at that time, Brugge had an indoor harbor - that's when she saw two figures, one dressed in red and the other one, dressed in blue. I don't know the meaning of it because that goes too deep and my life is not comparable with her life in any sense, but there must be a reason why I remembered her, staring at the Portrait of a Lady, that hung in the vacation house of Peter's grandfather, Daniel Lobe. I often don't take notice when things happen the way I expect them to happen, but this was an important game changer - Peter had taken away everything of value when he moved out, but not this painting and that means that he knew that it was something that he was not supposed to interferre with. Afterwards, there came other lives, each with its own particularity, but this life was a 'complete' memory, the kind of memories I would use to describe my current life. Off and on, I could move into a life I had before and tell the story of that life - Chayat, for example, was a Maya high priestess that married twice the Sun God - when you'll see the movie, you will understand how that was possible and, of course, Ry'an and Amon Ra were humans, just like you and me, but they lived in a whole different period, we can't remember anymore. Belisa's paintings were very mystical - she drew what she saw in her head and it's not so difficult to understand that she was a natural born painter, so her paintings often got that naive presentation, we seldom see in the work of adult painters. My story is my own piece of art, though it didn't go into the right direction and I feel discriminated and rejected for the most part, but we can change our mentality and preserve the good things, instead of destroying them - don't call me a liar of a woman that can't accept her defeat - what I tell is TRUE and finally, it will lead to *One World Vision on Humanity* ...
@@axemaster8331 -> what implicates your reaction - stranger things exist or this is completely made up by a woman, who desperately seek therapy? *Ultima Thule, The Perfect Story* shall be the title of my autobiography and it will explain how difficult it was to be respected for the person I am. I don't have to make myself so vulnerable, but it makes a difference when more people can see the signs that this is a weird moment in time - the time when everything falls into the right place again and I got some extra tools to do a good job. It doesn't cost you anything to give it a try, but debunking the whole idea makes you superior to me, isn't it - this is a once, but never again offer and when the final curtain falls, there won't be a second chance to react appropriate. Take it or leave it, you are not the one that makes the difference and RUclips is not the place where wonders will happen anyway. I'm DONE with this poisoned mentality and one shall have to find a solution anyway because HUMANITY is immortal, although people are not. This is the end of the World as we know it and the beginning of our personal engagement - help when you can make a difference and otherwise, stay out of sight!!!
One think I don't understand is why the faces in pictures of this era are often unrealistic. The artist clearly has the skill to do better based on all of the other detail in the painting.
I think it relates to artistic movements, standards of attractiveness / beauty trends, and status symbols. Through history, these things have changed and the stylization of portraits reflects those shifting values. After all, it was expensive to commission art, so the style in which people were painted was part of that overall statement about their tastes and socioeconomic standing. You can observe the shifting tastes throughout time, like the frolicking, puckered-lip ‘porcelain doll’ look you see in portraits of the Rococo era.
People in today's world have amazing cameras on their phone and yet, so many people facetune and Photoshop their face or body to look poreless, younger, slimmer, taller, bigger ass, bigger lips, muscles, tanned or pale. People want to fit the beauty standards of today, the way the people in the past wanted to fit the beauty standards of the time. I paint in oils and EVERY TIME I do somebody's portrait they say the same thing _"Make me look pretty/ handsome, and don't accentuate XYZ"._ 🙄🙄 Besides, there's also trends in art too, that's why many paintings have a combo of beauty standards and art style trends that can be seen of the time.
@@PanglossDr omg. Beauty standards change dude. Who wants to look like they have sausage lips due to an allergic reaction??? Yet plenty of people get their face pumped full of filler! You only *think* they're ugly because you're brainwashed to believe in different beauty standards 🙄
Great video, thanks! It's really interesting to read everybody's take on it. I like the theory that the painting represents a contract for her to act on his behalf - basically a Power of Attorney. This makes more sense than an engagement or wedding, because (to me) she's definitely depicted as pregnant, even allowing that she's holding her gown bunched up. So it's likely that they're already married. So the two people in the mirror would be witnesses to the contract, and it also makes sense of Van Eyck's otherwise-odd signature in the middle of the work - he's signing it as a witness: "I was here" rather than "I painted this." If this all is the case, then it's a really powerful statement - Arnolfini trusts his wife, her intelligence and judgment. It's such a great painting because in spite of the stiff poses and all the symbolism, it seems clear that they're in a loving, affectionate marriage - the bed, the bare feet, the dog (fidelity), the oranges and cherries for fertility (literally fruitfulness).
I remember my art history teacher going over many of these details and in the end saying "On the other hand if we had the opportunity to speak with the people involved in the painting they might just say 'Symbolism? No...the dog just knocked over the oranges and for the life of us we could never keep all the candles lit.'
Example of a closed minded person
@@EmmaJohnsonShenanigans Closed-minded? An interpretation, basically... a guess as with many paintings.
Nothing in a painting, as in a film, is there accidentally, every detail is deliberate if often difficult to decipher.
@@theeastman9136 Yes, everything is deliberate but not everything has a deeper meaning other than ‘it looks good’ and I am not saying that’s the case in this painting but what my teacher was trying to instill in her students was a healthy skepticism of just assuming a classical interpretation of a work of art was the only interpretation. We misinterpret works of art in the modern age even when we have the artist themselves literally telling us what it’s about, there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t be any different with art hundreds or even thousands of years old!
@@GeekFilter I agree with you. As a photographer and artist, it took me years to decipher the actual reasons and intuitions behind great photographs. Sometimes beautifully accidental, sometimes mysteriously deliberate.
The "Jan Van Eyck was here" is my favorite part. It shows his personality in a way, maybe somewhat playful contrasted with the mastery of someone who you would expect to take everything in life too seriously.
@@QuantumLeap89 it’s easy to separate ourselves from people who lived long before us, especially famous people/people of history. We often put people like that on a pedestal which is why sometimes it’s a little jarring when they do something that reminds us that despite all the money, fame and prestige… they’re still just people. Age also has something to do with it. The sinking of the Titanic was tragic, but we aren’t devastated by it anymore. If it had occurred more recently than that would be a different story! Because it would be fresh in our minds. I hope that makes sense! Or at least that’s my opinion.
@@QuantumLeap89 Well thank you for your anecdotal life experience, I'll keep that in mind.
However, we're talking about the 14th and 15th century here where artists *_weren't_* highly recognized and sought after just like theatre actors were on the lowest rung of the social ladder. A time where these talents and gifts were looked at as crafts like carpentry or pottery. The romantic arts have a history of going hand and hand with perfectionism, aka taking your work/life too seriously. Hope that answers your question.
It wasn't considered a joke at the time
It's like graffiti ...in a painting.
Alfred Hitchcock was in all his later films!
Seeing this painting up close for the first time in the National Gallery caused tears to roll down my cheeks. I was astonished at how small it actually is. Van Eyck's brushes must have had only one bristle, two at the most.
Very much the same technique usedniw in painting Warhammer miniatures!
@@rainbowstones5431 IKR??😉
Tears? A little dramatic?
😂🤣😂
@@bunnylarese2161 Ever since the internet was created people describe over-the-top emotional outbursts in response to things. Like "LOL". Does anyone really believe people are constantly laughing out loud, or rolling on the floor laughing, or laughing so hard their bodies are ejected into space or what-have-you? No. It's just that text requires a more...err...vibrant display of emotion in the hopes any emotion at all gets through.
I remember studying this in my Art History class, but I particularly remember it as an example of perspective. It really is interesting how both the ceiling and the floor can be seen together in such a strange angle. Everything is basically pointing toward the couple and, by extension, the mirror. It almost has sort of a “globe-like” or “orb-like” appearance, like that of a fish-eye lens, so as to allow for us to see more of the room. Quite interesting!
Perspective is violated in the painting. Flemish artist did not follow the standard practice of a single vanishing point. The floor, chandelier and figures are all out of perspective and there are multiple vanishing points.
Like a fisheye lens!
Like someone else pointet out in the comments section "That it was most likely made using a very early and then secret technique of the pinhole camera"
@@speedomars it's not that they deliberately didn't follow rules of perspective and the single vanishing point, those rules of perspective were not known at that time, it was later that the idea of a single vanishing point was discovered.
@@KrissFliss yes I would agree with you they discovered the technic and had lots of fun with it , knowing 500years later is will drive thought's idiots in the future mad, with endless hours and debates
You may be interested to know Artist David Hockney RA investigated this work and came to the conclusion that it was most likely made using a very early and then secret technique of the pinhole camera, lenses were a then very new piece of science and were made in this area at the time. David's conclusion was that it would not be possible to drawn by eye many of the elements particularly the hanging lamp. You may be able to find the documentary where Hockney investigate this and other works which use perspective and other cutting edge inventions which pushed art forward, sorry though I cannot remember what it was called although a search around David Hockney and illusion/perspective may help you find it if interested.
Damn you just beat me to it, about the camera obscura.
@@ZER0-- :D
That's very interesting! Thank you so much!
Fantastic theory and documentary about the technology behind Renaissance art.
David Hockney has a book called, "Secret Knowledge" which go into this is detail. You should watch the Documentary, "Tims Vermeer". its so interesting.
i find it so incredible to look at the faces of people who lived so long ago. to see their clothes, their expressions and to get an idea of how they lived. that in itself is priceless in my opinion.
Im just blown away by the insane amount of clear detail when u zoom in, props to Jan Van Eyck!
I’ve always enjoyed this painting. I can remember past art teachers talking about it, and in junior high, a friend of mine did a watercolor painting of the mirror part only. She did such a fantastic job on it, I remember being so impressed by her talent. Then she gave it to me! And after all these years, I still have it. ❤️
I dearly wish to see the painting 💗 must be a beautiful one
I feel like he's honoring his beloved dead wife and in his grief and survivors guilt asking her if he can move on and be fruitful. He is a man who had a facial deformity and his wife loved him and he was deeply impacted by her love. Look at all that green he put her in and look at his face and think about how long he waited to remarry. He was rich, women were definitely after him... I'd bet the artist had sketched her face before she died.
Did he have a facial deformity and is he also a rich man?
Until death do us part. He is holding his hand in a blessing pose.
What facial deformity? He looks like a normal dude to me.
@@RedDeadSakharine his philtrum and his columella are attached, possibly a minor cleft palette.
Wow!!! How beautiful! Thank you so much for your explanation. So many people in these times forget that people are not simply logical, but deeply emotional beings and we make our choices based on emotions. More then than now.
Beautiful story of love ❤
17 years ago I took an art history class in high school and I can honestly say this piece of art is the only one I vividly remember learning about. It always stood out to me and will forever be my favourite painting.
Same here, though I personally was far more drawn to Caravaggio and his groundbreaking use of lighting. I see a lot of his lighting techniques in modern film and graphic novels
Same. 20 years since I studied this painting in college. The biography I read said the artist had the same birthday as me and that he was left-handed. Neither of which I can confirm with a google search. I have a shockingly bad memory so his work clearly struck a chord for me to remember so much as his nickname.
I never would have known about all the symbolism in this painting. Really interesting to hear all the backstories and explanations! Although, I was really eager to hear what the imp-like statue in the back behind the woman's hand meant. Anyone have any thoughts on it?
Looks like a china dog/chinese guardian lion/foo dog
After some research the figure praying over a dragon up on the bed post appears to be Saint Margaret of Antioch. The figures below by the woman's hand appear to just be European grotesques/chimeras. Super vague & intriguing possible use of symbols. What an enigma of art.
We are looking through the eyes of the people in the reflection who are witnessing this event
Wish I could help you, but for all the art classes I've taken over the years, no instructor ever had a clue. Sorry.
@@landonstenersen3401 the artist?
Standing with another finished work leaning on the wall behind him?
If you see the reflection in the top right of a window it doesn't correspond to the full length window in main scene and, if a second window out of shot, there is no way the orientation would leave main scene with out a second point of lighting.
That is so unbelievable how great certain people can paint. It blows my mind at how well, how realistic, and how detailed this painting is. How is it even possible for someone to be able to paint like that? So impressive!!!
It’s been solved! Cannot remember the author’s name bc I’m very old, but for my MA in art history I read a book that convincingly proved that the ptg portrays a couple’s engagement. Not a wedding, but proof of an engagement. It was painted for the two families to have concrete proof, since their merchant banking families lived in Italy.
070322. christina hill
, "It’s been solved! ... I read a book that convincingly proved that the ptg portrays a couple’s engagement. "
Did you actually watch the video? She's not pregnant.
@@fishyfishyy Mia Chong
, "Did you actually watch the video? She's not pregnant."
@@fishyfishyy actually she IS pregnant, she died in childbirth.
It has not. This is a silly statement
This painting made a deep impression on me as a kid. They look so serious, but the man's hat is ridiculously big. I always assumed the lady was pregnant. And those shoes were crazy-looking and modern. You have pointed out even more fascinating stuff. Thanks!
The woman was not pregnant. And the wooden clogs were called “ pattens”. People wore them over their shoes, to keep their shoes free from the mud in the unpaved Medieval streets.
😮😮 Look Russian president 😅😅😅😅
This is my favourite painting. The detail is mind-blowing, and no matter how many times I look at it, I can always find something new.
Yeah mine too Terri. An artist friend brought me a print back from a London art gallery years ago. I framed it. Still on my front room wall years later.
FAVOURITE.
Terri, this is also if not my favourite painting, then definitely one of them. I think at first glance, the vibrant red and green and the fact that they are complimentary colours, really appeals to people. I lived in London for a year and during my lunch breaks would often walk over to see it at the national gallery. My brother-in-law absolutely loves to paint. He sits down in the basement for hours and does paintings of a variety of subjects and styles. He has taken great pleasure in doing his version of the masters like Van Gogh, Renoir, Klimt, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, etc. one Christmas Eve day l arrived at my sister’s home and the family were greeting me. My mother had said that l should see what Gregg was painting now. I said l wish he would paint Arnolfini and his wife and my mother said to go take a look. Yup, he had done the painting and l was blown away by how he virtually replicated that masterpiece!!! I was even jealous because l wanted the painting. It is larger than the original and l was in awe how he captured it all, from the figures to the chandelier to the mirror to the dog… just captured it beautifully. One day I’m going to ask him to do the painting for me. Naturally l would pay him. I wish you could see his rendition of this incredibly loved painting.❤️
@@wendycrawford1792 Wow!! That sounds amazing. Your brother is lucky to be so talented. I wish I had some artistic talent, but I can't even draw a stickman. His copy of the Arnolfini portrait must have taken ages...there's so much detail in it. I wish I could see it too.
I also wish I could spend my lunch breaks looking at this masterpiece. You're so lucky to have been able to see it in person...I won't lie, I'm jealous.
I don't remember the exact dimensions of the painting, but just to drive home how painful detailed it is, this painting is roughly the same size as a standard sheet of paper. It's often depicted as much larger in popular media, but it's relatively quiet small.
I've actually never even seen this painting before, but it's now my favourite painting. What an amazing talent this man was and incredibly creative and thoughtful with the details and symbolism.
Every artist at this time-as well as before and after-used incredible amounts of symbolism in their work, bc the Art was supposed to tell viewers a story about the subject(s) portrayed....it was not produced to just look beautiful or interesting or whatever, as we saw with the dogs in the funerary figures. People who paid for the artwork demanded much more than that, combined with the status of being able to afford the works in the first place. Much of what was commonly known about the symbols portrayed when works were completed has been lost over the hundreds of years, and so art historians try to interpret the symbolism for us based on what is known about the artists and their subjects, as this woman has done.
My favourite too since childhood. Interesting video.
I like the picture of Einstein with his tongue out.
I recall seeing this one before and seeing it again in an art history class I took. At a quick glance, it wasn’t a very eye catching piece for me (especially because I think the man is oddly posed). But if you look at it and take more than just a passing glance, that’s when you start to see all that insane detail that was put into it. It’s not the type of detail that stands out and smacks you in the face like the portraits with the detailed lacy collars. You have to REALLY look, like you did in this video, to see all the subtle detail he added. But it’s such crazy detail! I mean, who would do this?! Can you imagine the time it took him to paint all these little details like the reflection in the mirror, The depictions in the mirror frame, the hairs on the dog?! Truly a master of his craft!
As for theory, I’m going with the it was his first wife and she was dead. Not just because her candle was out or because of the dog, but also because they’re both barefoot, he’s wearing black, their expressions and also his pose. The reason I never cared for this one at first glance was because I felt he was oddly posed and it’s mostly due to the position of his hand. It’s almost as if he’s trying to keep her at a distance or he’s saying, “No, that’s okay, I’m good…” It’s an odd gesture to make for a portrait with your wife. Her being dead already would explain that.
Calling Van Eyk a 'sucker' for detail hits below the belt. This painting was made possible by using lenses which began appearing in the 1420s. Vermeer lived next door to a lense maker.
That's an interesting fact! Thank you for sharing!
I think it's compliment. Sucker might not be the right word. To say he was obsessed with details would be better.
@@YTistooannoying nice correction. Knowing word meanings helps avoid this type of mishap.
@@victrola2007 My gut feeling is that the person who put this video together isn't educated enough to be talking on the issue. She got so many things wrong and missed others. Were I grading this, she would get a 75.
No lenses were used in making this painting. It is NOT a projection. ( early lenses had significant spherical aberration and would have resulted in distortion of the image ) There is nothing in the painting that can not easily be achieved using a perspective framework and the basic perspective tools available to artists in this timeframe.
I just discovered this channel and I am completely in love. You make me look at pieces in a way I wouldn't have before and make me fall in love with details unexpected. Thank you!
Hum, never looked at it that closely even though it was briefly covered in my art history class. But when I took the class, there was no internet and no wikipedia with a very large image of the painting to zoom into. Interesting. There's only one candle in the chandelier, and it's above his head. Where a candle would have gone above her head, it's completely burned away, just wax left on the holder. That's probably a metaphore for "she's dead now". I'm going to go with: it's a memorial painting. And the fact it's summer outside but they are wearing warm clothing is probably another metaphore for the coldness of death or of lonliness. The people seen in the convex mirror down the hall could mean something like he has friends but they are at a distance and can't take the place of his departed wife. (that's a stretch, but sounds good)
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video.
The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now.
But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later.
This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances.
It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting.
And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know.
The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter (I was there, or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret.
This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling.
The one thing that it truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat *it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning(, etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died.
This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo or purgatory.
This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman ion her death bed to the pregnancy, the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time.
This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child.
This is the meaning of this painting.
I've seen so many people describe this piece of art on RUclips but nobody does such an amazing job making you feel you are really there in front of the painting and just be in awe as you show and describe everything. This is an amazing video! Thank you so much for making this video
There's an episode from A Stitch in Time from Absolute History that tries to recreate the lady's dress. It's fascinating!
For about 15 minutes of my life I was the only person present and ogling this painting at the National Gallery. Crazy!
I remember seeing a Total History video about this piece. The dress, specifically. TH was shockingly honest in that one, actually hiring a team of dressmakers to recreate the dress, with methods that would have been available at the time. The woman presenter in the video got to wear the dress, and commented, “This is so heavy! If I don’t lean back, I’m going to fall over!” And, holding up the hem, leaning back… well, she certainly looked pregnant! Even though she most assuredly was not!
Dyed wool must be ridiculously heavy. My double-layered velvet cloak is quite heavy… when I’m not wearing it
Is the video on RUclips?
@@PrettyGlory it sure is. I don’t recall the title, though.
Pretty sure it was by Total History. Maybe Absolute History…
geez, in summer nonetheless! How she hasn't passed out from heat exhaustion is beyond me...
@@Liliarthan mini ice age to start
@@PrettyGlory It's A Stitch in Time S01E02 (season 1, episode2) Arolfini and it's very good.
It's wonderful how old paintings had so much details in it. Nowadays, everyone obsessed with realism and symbolism ...
I love the 15th century Dutch artists. This painting is one of my favourites. Thank you for making this video.
This is truly a masterpiece . It's amasing how a painting could be more detailed and pricese than a " high definition camera" .
I heard of this painting first through an historical fashion minded video (to recreate the voluminous dress). It was a treat to learn about all the minutae, what people think it means and does not mean, and that mirror, and all sorts of little trivia, such as the ceremony for the wife to handle a husbands business.
I saw that show it was fascinating to watch the try to recreate the dress.
I love her perceptive comments. There are details that I've never noticed in this painting.
Stunning painting to see for real in the National Gallery (London). Breathtaking.
I have seen it, it’s quite small, but exquisite
When I was a child, I had a nightmare about this painting, I dreamt that there was human skull 💀 hanging from the hat, I thought there was something morbid about it, perhaps the dark lighting. Now as an adult, I admire the painting so much.
One of my favorite paintings. You’ve really started my mind thinking about the different interpretations of this famous painting! Thank you.
Thank you for shedding so much light on this piece, I’ll admit I’ve seen it for years and never before appreciated it’s detail
Certainly is incredible. Excellent overview, thank you! When you do the next version of this painting, can you elaborate a little more on the reflection of the inner mirror you started with? _A request! I would like to know more about what's there... of the two figures it would seem logical that one is the artist himself._
Her hairline is very far back, such as Queen Elizabeth had, and the women in her court were made to have. The man looks much poorer then the woman who looks extremely rich. The two figures in the mirror also have clothing made from bight cloths such as only the rich could afford and may be her attendants. No painter could afford those colours. The mans shoes are wooden outside shoes with heals to keep his feet out of the mud, and since he still has his outside hat on, it looks like he may have just arrived. I believe she is pregnant... I have fitted clothing on customers for about 16 years and there is no way that cloth would stick out that far, unless pregnant. As her shoes are off, and she is in her bedroom, it looks as if she may have got out of bed. Perhaps the man is a priest who gave her a blessing for her baby? I think it's very likely, especially as there are religious paintings around the mirror. The little dog is probably just her pet. There is no way the two are married. Like chalk and cheese. Also.. the painter did not make much effort painting the mans face at all; all the detail is for the important rich woman with the plucked or receding hairline.
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video.
The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now.
But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later.
This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances.
It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting.
And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock was a disaster, so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. But it wasn't june, and this painting has no real seasons, just symbolisms.
The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and that the woman was not a declassee and the child was not a bastard child, they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter did (I was there), or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory amd we do not really know if they married or not.
And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret.
This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead decomposing face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling.
The man feels as good as dead and this painting is a tribute to his beloved woman and child.
The one thing that is truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child and mother. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat (it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning), etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died.
This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions post mortem, because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo and their unwed mothers in purgatory.
This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman, pregnant, to the woman on her death bed, to the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time.
This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child.
This is the meaning of this painting.
@@kachi2782 Thank you. What you are saying seems quite logical and perhaps more in keeping with someone who has studied this type of symbolism - have you?
@@AuntLizzie Thank you. My brother is an art historian and spent 25 years on this piece alone in documentation, research and travels, and this is just a little of his 300 pages thesis on this painting and of our long conversations about this extraordinary masterpiece.
I am just a wild life vet but i have always liked this painting, because of all the questions it raises.
I am usually not a big fan of this painter, but this painting is truly magnificent and fascinating.
@@kachi2782 What is the name of your brother's dissertation? Is it accessible to read? It certainly sounds interesting.
This has been my favorite painting for some time, now. Altogether, each time I look at it, I end up staring at all the details. It's amazing. So are many of his other works. In his "Annunciation", when you look at the robe on the left, the texture and perception of depth are beautiful!
I love these late middle ages hyper detailed paintings. I think that in many ways paintings lost a lot when they only painted the face clearly, and then made the rest of the body and clothes into a blur.
This became my favourite painting as a teenager doing my art GCSE. Just fabulous. It was a real privilege to see it 20 odd years later at The National Gallery.
I have seen this painting (just in photos) hundreds of time, but I never noticed the level of detail. *sad* This is an amazing painting.
So interesting! In the background picture, it looks like the backs of the two main characters- the green dress with white headdress, his cloak and hat. Also, the bed and windows and oranges are in the background picture, it looks like.
I did a repaint of this painting when I was a kid. :3 I chose it because of how many details there were.. needless to say, I didn’t get many of the details in it.. and it looks well.. nasty. But it’s hanging on a wall and I’m still proud of trying to recreate this masterpiece! Chandelier and the bed board was so hard to paint..
I always loved this artist. I couldn't get over the detail of her sleeves. The fabrics and how they were almost tactile.
I always turn these (possible) memento mori paintings sideways to see if the standing figure actually looks like the reference could have been lying down. She certainly looks like she might have been, with her head propped on a pillow, one arm across her chest, and the other being held up with the palm opened. Maybe the painting was started when she died, and finished a year later.
The man's pose is the same as the one priests use today for giving a blessing, dunno if it was the same historically. Maybe the people in the doorway represent her parents, and he is letting them take her with his blessing? Did her parents predecease her? It just seems likely to me that it's a family portrait.
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video.
The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now.
But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later.
This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances.
It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting.
And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know.
The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter (I was there, or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret.
This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling.
The one thing that it truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat *it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning(, etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died.
This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo or purgatory.
This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman ion her death bed to the pregnancy, the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time.
This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child.
This is the meaning of this painting.
@@kachi2782 That was a very good read, thank you!
@@valeriemcdonald440 Thank you, and you're welcome, my brother is an art historian, he spent 25 years on this painting. That's all i remember about what he told me regarding this piece, but his thesis on it is about 300 pages.
It is filled with symbols and riddles. He owns a very accurate copy of this painting in his house and when you stand in front of it, you feel like you are sucked into it. If you ever get to the met, go see it. To me it should be just as famous if not more than the monalisa.
@Kirsten Rohla Thank you Kirsten, i will have to ask my brother. I do otherwise have a copy of it, and if he allows me i will scan it and put it online.
@@kachi2782 Mainly in agreement with you. The man's hat is that of an abbé and too big for him. He is posed in giving a blessing and one of the 'witnesses' could have been the actual abbé.
The woman's pose is indeed horizontal in how the muscles look. The fact that the rich man stands without shoes is part of the humility aspect of the scene and you are right that there is an air of heartbreak.
There's wax of a melted candle across the chandelier from the lit candle, above the woman's head. I believe it does mean she is dead.
Edit: I love how you detailed the details of this. Subscribed! 🥰
Curiously, the dog's reflection does not appear in the mirror.
Maybe because she is dead after all
Spirit dog. Maybe a reference to the lady already being dead? Like “I’ve been commissioned to paint this woman so I can’t remove her in my details so let’s remove the dog”
also they aren't holding hands
It is not a reflection but 2 different (although connected) scenes
Wow! So much symbolism in this painting. Truly a masterpiece! It would have been lost on me had you not gone over all the "illuminating" details. 10/10 as always. As always, love your critique!
A very interesting painting! The details are phenomenal! My art history teacher mentioned that the hanging beads with tassel, the signature and the mirror was painted to symbolize a certificate, perhaps a marriage certificate.
The longer I look at this, the more convinced I become that this is in fact the most beautiful painting I've ever seen
It has been determined that she was indeed pregnant. She was holding up her dress yes, and likely died in childbirth. There are lots of other details supporting the woman is deceased that you absolutely missed, there are details and messages everywhere, but in order to understand them you need to be educated in not only literature, pop culture, and folklore to understand the symbolism. If you want a better, more indepth look at this painting look up the video by Waldemar Januszczak made for Perspective.
Yep! A lot of the symbolism in this painting elude to fertility, life and death.
The sheer excellence of the content of the narration renders the vocal affectation of the speaker all the more incongruous.
Omg, the details in this portrait are amazing!!!
The very first time I saw the painting was in an old encyclopedia and seeing it made me wondered about how cool and well-done the painting is. The thing I never knew about the painting are the hidden details, since the book is limited. It's only this time I finally knew how much work and detail was in the painting. Amazing.
Jan van Eyck was really amazing and, along with Hieronymus Bosch, my favourite 15th century artist. They both moved away from religious paintings, which was the expected depictive art of the era, and began painting everyday things (apart from Bosch......Just......Look at some of his paintings). Of course, Van Eyck did paint things such as triptychs for Catholic cathedrals and chapels, but a lot of his works shed new light on ways of painting.
I've heard about this painting and the details but when you showed us the reflection in the mirror and zoomed out that made the painting all the more impressive.
So many questions, virtually endless: What was the dog's name? Why is the man
wearing a hat indoors? Who was the other figure in the mirror with Van Eyck? What kind of potatoes were they? They look like russet: did Europeans have russet potatoes? Where did they buy the oranges, or are they tangerines? What tiny feet the man had, judging by the small shoes: what size were they and where can I order a pair? Was that broom on the bedside for brushing crumbs off the sheet? So much guessing, such a silly voice.
@john roberts
Amazing relatation 😅😅🤣
"what kind of potatoes were they?" 🤣
Funny 😄👍
Potatoes came only after the discovery of the New World, so no potatoes unfortunately
Also, why is the couple not holding hands in the reflection?
Ever since I was young I've always been fascinated with this painting. It looks like a simple portrait but it has so much to say.
Wow, more interesting details & interpretations. We studied this painting in Art History & God's approval of marriage did seem to be the story of this beautiful artwork. Dogs also symbolized fidelity & loyalty. ("Fido") And possibly the gesture of the husband's raised hand too. Her taking his hand means she trusts & accepts his promise of fidelity. And vice-versa. The fruits symbolized fertility, "Go forth & be fruitful". As did the drape of her dress, alluding to a future pregnancy. The two onlookers in the mirror (possibly representing God's eye) appear to be pleased with this couple pairing, indicating an approved marriage. And then there's the removal of their shoes, the bed & the endearing but solemn way the two are looking at each other, possibly suggesting their wedding night. 💓💓 (Re the death aspect, the husband's dark clothing could indicate mourning & the loss of his wife. And even though her candle (light) above is extinguished, she's still colorful & vibrant. Suggesting rebirth in heaven; reinforced by her rounded belly.)
A wonderful lesson in how to look at art more critically!
What strikes me as interesting is the fact the mirror doesn't depict reality. Other paintings with mirrors or images of the painter include the canvas and other painter tools. This mirror is depicting a vague interpretation of what would have been there is no canvas or painter was there. Very unusual.
Jan van Eyck has to be one of my favourite artists, and I often find myself comparing my own work to his and find it lacking in comparison.
There is something in the way the husband looks that seems rather pious. His dark clothing and the way his hand is held up almost seems like some movement a clergyman would make. An oath does seem probable as it's his right hand. It seems as though the painting, filled with detail as it is, is meant to showcase the wife. It's all so interesting isn't it?
She died
Amazing details! Great video. Thank you.
wow! this video is amazing! it must have taken forever to create it. Thank you so much for sharing it with us!
Thank you so much! It took a while but it was lot of fun to make.
Probably one of the best explanations I've heard about this painting, and you made only 6 minutes! This needs to be longer, more details, everything you know! Please!
I have always admired this painting especially as others saying real life how small it is plus when a young man I was a draughtsman and was taught perspective for quite some time as well - so those skills I feel do give some basis for my respect for Jan Van Eyck. Now many years older and for the last three years taking up oil painting on a daily basis I know how incredibly difficult it is to control a brush with oil paint to get a fine line in the way Van Eyck does, plus the time for the paint to dry (days sometimes) so you can glaze over it, I now have so much respect and awe for this artist than ever before. Considering the absolute rubbish that so-called artists now call art when compared to this absolute genius and master of the brush, we have in fact declined in artistic skills. I have looked at a great number of paintings, especially 20th century years but as yet, no way does any of them match this man's skill.
I guess you know about the mahl (or maul) stick painter's use for supporting the hand to keep from touching down on the painting.
Since art is the expression of the soul of a culture, I’d say that the rubbish we are now putting out in the name of Art shows that we’ve abandoned something much more precious than the art itself.
@@avicennitegh1377 Yes I do and in fact I actually made one. Thank you for reminding me, as I often get so involved in my painting I forget to use it.
@@CSUnger Oh yes, I feel that so strongly, especially recently reading that in America a major art competition was won by an AI drawing machine. The same goes with films is that the emphasis is now all on the technology i.e. special effects and the impact it will give the viewer. Last night I watched the first two episodes of 'The Rings of Power' and they had the audacity to call it a Tolkien series. I accept on my 64" Smart TV some scenes did look good but the story line was boring as hell. No way did if have any soul, because at the heart of LOTR is the 'soul' of a great HUMAN writer, which to me is the same for an artist who in their paintings is going to reach out to us differently. For me, it is 'Nighthawks' by Edward Hopper because for some reason it triggers a very strong human response as it reminds me so much of when I was young hitch-hiking around the UK and Europe and many times being dropped off late at night outside road side cafés we had back in the early 1970s. Van Eyck is the master of that because not just in his unbelievable and some would say 'non-human' perspective, detail and artistic draughtsman skills but the mood and atmosphere of both the man and the woman whose expressions and how they stand just convey so much to the viewer. I began painting far too late (i.e. sadly ever achieving the skills I am only just learning to appreciate) but occasionally when I 'bore' people (LOL) who come to my house and view my work, their reaction and comments really (more so than all my other achievements in my life) absolutely delight me, as in the tiniest way they are giving me what you so rightly say is by so many so-called artists are abandoning.
@@wakeupuk3860 totally understandable :)
I'm stunned at the fine detail on the black hat. That is something someone would have to get very close to even notice.
Even small insignificant details are just fascinating.
So, writing your name and 'I was here' is an ancient art. Nice.
I came across your channel very recently. Your explanation of paintings is extremely fascinating. I sometimes get lost into the storytelling because it's so absorbing. Could you try narrating on some paintings from India? There are numerous paintings of various kinds.
Look Russian president face 😅😅😅😅 real
The artist’s signature is art in itself! I love this painting, and really enjoy your critiques! Thank you!
The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now.
But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later.
This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances.
It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting.
And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock was a disaster, so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know. But it wasn't june, and this painting has no real seasons, just symbolisms.
The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just legalizes the union and shows that the woman was not a declassee and the child was not a bastard child, they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter did (I was there), or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory and we do not really know if they got married or not.
And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret.
This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead decomposing face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling.
The man feels as good as dead and this painting is a tribute to his beloved woman and child.
The one thing that is truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child and mother. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat (it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning), etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died.
This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions post mortem, because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo and their unwed mothers in purgatory.
This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman, pregnant, to the woman on her death bed, to the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time.
This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child.
This is the meaning of this painting.
Arnolfini and Van Eyck lived in Brugge (Bruges) in the then Burgundic Netherlands, not in Italy. Belgian cherries fruit end of June and July. Summers can be chilly at times over here. Especially in those times as it was in the little ice-age form 1300 to the 1800's. So I would not over-analyze their clothing. Not impossible they wore these in that season. At the same time it was also a medium to show of their wealth, even if it was in a understated way.
Finally, your statement that it was a memento mori is absolutely right, and I don’t think many scholars would state otherwise. It remains a wonderful peace of art. I never saw it in real, but I had the privilege of seeing the Ghent altarpiece (Lam Gods) often when I studied there and I was almost able to touch the Virgin of the chancellor Rolin in the Louvre. Every time it is an out of time experience to be in the presence of the works of the founder of modern European painting.
@@taiqidong9841 According to other research it is also presumed that the portrait might have been painted in the Arnolfini residence in Lucca Italy., or painted as if Giovanni and his bride were in their residence in Lucca which Eyck visited.
Arnolfini who came from the Republic of Genoa didn't live in Burges all year round, he moved back and forth between his homeland of Genoa and Bruges, which was just a place of business as the first stock exchange and also one of the most important maritime route at that time, due to its very strategic location. But Giovanni was filthy rich, and i mean insanely rich, he was THE jetsetter of his time, even if his jet were ships, in today's money he would have a fortune of hundreds of billions and needless to say he travelled intensively. Bruges was his headquarter and office, but he had residences everywhere and was friend to all the leaders of that time.
Van Eyck and Giovanni were pretty close and had much more than a painter/subject relationship and Van Eyck visited Italy many times, like every artists of that time, due to Italy progressively becoming the heart of the renaissance.
And the Arnolfini residence in Lucca had a magnificent Orangerie and many cherry trees.
So it could be that the Painter might have been to the Arnolfini residence in Lucca, and this might also explain the Jan Van Eyck, I was there , message.
Maybe he actually painted this on the wall of the Lucca residence.
It is all open to suppositions.
The more you try to understand this painting the more it gets complicated !
And also, it is a misconception that the region of Bruges was part of the Burgundian "Netherlands".
It was actually part of the Duchy or Burgundy (in Flanders), ruled by, if i am not mistaken, Philip the good, or Philip the bold, or John the Fearless.
They had such cool names !
Thanks for the comment.
@@kachi2782 Yes, ok, well, it's complicated innit.
The name Burgurdian Netherlands is a normal way, here, in Belgium, to try to describe under witch master we served at that time (later on we had the Spanish Netherlands, the Austrian Netherlands, the French Netherlands, the DUTCH Netherlands (really) and than we stopped as we got independent and later on we skipped naming the era after the Fritz (twice !!!), but you get it, right?).
Now, Van Eyck traveled a lot, in secret, that is, and so did Arnolfini (not in secret), but, you know,... the style of the furniture, the style of the windows... it is so very ... Brugge
Anyway, You should come, It's a treat when you're into this. Remarkably well preserved. Awfully filled with tourists everywhere, but if it gets to you, you also have Gent (Ghent), Ieper, Antwerpen, like ten cities worth going to, really. And i'm not even talking about Brussels and the Walloon region...
Anyway, doesn't matter. It was a great era, when Brugge and later Antwerpen (Antwerp) and after the Spaniards bastards won: Amsterdam, where the Manhattans of their time with all the vanitas you can expect. Nowadays, we probably should try Beijing to feel the same thrill, it's science fiction over there as I heard...
@@taiqidong9841 Your english is so good i had no idea i was talking to a Belgian. Then you certainly know better about the history of this area and era than i ever will. I am not a historian at all.
On peut egalement parler en francais si vous le voulez. Je suis Islandais mais je vis en Suisse depuis quelques annees et j'ai fait une partie de mes etudes de medecine veterinaire en france (unfortunately, i really loathe this country) . J'ai visite la Belgique deux fois, c'est absolument magnifique, l'architecture est phenomenale. les Belges sont tres agreables et tout est a proximite .
La region de Burgundy (Je ne sais pas si c'est Bourgogne en Francais car la Bourgogne me semble etre autre chose) etait vraiment le centre financier de l'europe occidentale pendant tres longtemps et ce n'est peut etre pas une coincidence que le centre financier et le quartier le plus riche de New York s'appelle Manhattan (un nom Hollandais).
Pour ce qui est de Pekin, J'ai vecu assez longtemps en Asie, surtout au Japon (pres de 20 ans) et j'ai visite la chine plusieurs fois, et Pekin, Shanghai et Hongkong sont tres certainement des centres financiers tres important mais avec ces deux milliard d'habitants, la Chine ne pourra jamais etre un pays prospere, et la grande majorite des chinois vivent encore de la meme facon que leur parents et grand parents avant eux et ne ressentent absolument pas le progres economique de leur pays.
Je pense que Bruges etait reellement le Manhattan de son epoque ou le Tokyo des annees 80 pendant la periode bulle,
Etes vous d'origine asiatique ou votre screen name est en rapport avec une passion pour la Chine ?
Si vous avez l'occasion de visiter la Chine, faites le, c'est vraiment un pays phenomenal avec une culture a laquelle pres de la moitie de la planet doit enormement, a commencer par le Japon, mais aussi le Moyen Orient, la Grece antique, la Rome antique. La chine, la Perse (Sumeria et Mesopotamie) , l'Egypte, l'Inde et les civilization sud americaines pre colombiennes (Incas, Azteques, Mayas) sont vraiment les 5 civilizations qui comptent le plus au monde a mon avis, les autres civilization n'auraient jamais existees sans elles et nous n'auriont probablement pas eu la Grece et Rome antique, et plus tard la Renaissance Italienne et Europeenne. Meme en tant que descendant de Vikings je dois m'incliner devant ces civilisations.
This is my one of my most favorite paintings! It’s so intriguing and so detailed. I could looks at it for hours and still have new questions.
A great video. Thank you. How the panel came into the National Gallery is almost as mysterious as its subject matter. It was booty of a kind and was supposedly bargained for by a British/Scottish Colonel who was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo where it hung in the room in the hospital in Brussels in which he recuperated. The story is likely a fabrication and is VERY similar to that of how one of the panels for Bruegel's Seasons came into the possession of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The underdrawing shows many variations in the positions of hands and the original shape of the mirror depicting the Stations of the Cross.
As we know from the stylus drawing of Cardinal Albergati with its colour annotations in Dresden, Van Eyck travelled to Antwerp to draw the sitter and then returned to his studio in Bruges to finish the portrait in oils - or rather pigmented glazes.
I have loved this painting all my life. It is special to me. I do not believe it has ever been loaned for exhibition but I may be wrong.
This is now my favorite piece! I read about the underdrawing and should have included that in the video! From the sketch, it seems like van Eyck altered Giovanni Arnolfini's facial features quite a bit. Thank you for all of those great facts!
It was stolen like most pieces at the MET or the British Museum or the Louvres, etc, ... either by colonialists or by so called allies who saved europe from the nazi to make it theirs, etc, ...
This was one of my first art history assignments that I still think about every now and then.
This painting made me cry. I don’t know.. it’s just such an exceptional piece. That perhaps her candle 🕯 has burned out or perhaps the candle 🕯 is under the eyes of god.
Here is the message i wrote to the person who uploaded the video.
The cherry tree is not blooming it is fruiting so this would be june indeed in Italy. But they are wearing winter gowns. I don't know if you have ever been to italy but in june you do not wear fur lined wool gowns. There are other documentations of the place Giovanni lived and outside stood and Orangerie (or green house) which was the status of rich people who could afford thanks to this to have fruits much earlier than other people but also enjoy the sent of orange flowers And the oranges are a symbol of fertility and wealth but the orange are neglected and left to rot by the window showing how unimportant they are now.
But the reality is that there is another explanation i will get to later.
This is not the living room, this is the Bed Chamber, people didn't have beds in their living rooms they used their bedrooms to socialize, that was the norm among rich people and anybody allowed in their bed chamber was of the highest status among their acquaintances.
It has been shown in further studies that the wife had a miscarriage and both her and the child died before this painting was made, which explains the dog and the pregnant pose. The shoes on the floor near the bed are also a symbol of death, hence the shoes displayed this way, while the people not wearing shoes is also a symbol of the sanctity of the painting.
And finally you forget the two people in the painting who are witnesses of the union of Giovanni and his bride. In those days being pregnant out of wedlock so the ceremony had to be private and in the 15th century only witnesses were required, not priests and unions could be celebrated anywhere, including the bed chamber. So if this was indeed June the fur gowns are a way to hide the pregnancy while at the same time hinting at it, as a sort of secret only the people concerned could fully know.
The witnesses are faceless because they are irrelevant. The painting just shows that the union was legal and they could have paid any random person off the street to be a witness to the union as long as they made a cross on a document signifying they were there like the Painter (I was there, or more likely the painter himself is the witness and remains faceless because it is all a dream and an allegory. And in the case of a union with an already pregnant woman, it was in the best interest of everyone to keep it secret.
This is why the man is in mourning with a sad and grim face almost a dead face, while the wife is radiant and the dog is smiling.
The one thing that it truly remarkable about this painting is that it was painted following the death of the unborn child. The child is the one that is not present and yet everything is about death on this painting, from the candles to the mirror to the dog to the shoes, the hat *it was customary to wear a hat at a visitation, and in mourning(, etc, .... Also the woman is actually painted lying down on her death bed if you turn the image sideways and the man's gesture is the gesture of the priest giving the last sacraments. Hence also the importance of the bed, which is where people were born, people consummated their union, gave birth and people died.
This painting is a way to acknowledge the death and honour the lives of the wife and child and also to legitimise their unions because of the religious superstitions about children dying or born out of wedlock and not christened yet who ended up in limbo or purgatory.
This painting takes place in several periods in time, from when the woman was alive to the woman ion her death bed to the pregnancy, the death of the child to the happiness this couple once had to the sadness the man finds himself in now. It is a Memento Mori painting and it must not be looked literally, because it is an allegory, an elegy, it is like a time machine traveling through space and time.
This is actually the painting of a broken man with a broken heart who cries the death of his beloved wife and child.
This is the meaning of this painting.
@@kachi2782 Wow. Incredible. Thank you for taking the time to write that!
@@Incus_Audio My pleasure. There are plenty more things to say about this painting. For instance the dog is not reflected in the mirror because it doesn7t exist, it only represents death.
@@kachi2782 Ayo! I NEVER even considered that! Wow that crazy how much thought went into this! Wow!
@@kachi2782 thanks for the explanation, I think you are right.
I first saw this painting in a school textbook. Then decades later I stood in front of it at the National Gallery. It's an incredible piece of work and I always try to pop in whenever I'm in London just to see it again.
I am a medievalist and have used this painting for reference when I'm doing medieval arts. And I just learned more about this painting than I ever did in a book. Now I want to see it in person
I've seen this painting ages ago when I was just 8 and it gave me the chills...it's still scaring me to this day
It does have a bad vibe.
Giovanni is pronounced Jo-VANNI. The first 'i' softens the 'g', and is not voiced. Same with Giovanna obv...
Oops... Thank you for this! I try my best with pronunciations, but don't always get them right. So sorry about that!
The way you describe art infuses so much life into these paintings. I never knew I was so interested in art before I found your channel. Thank you for your work and wonderful explanations. I don't know if it means much, but I subscribed just now after binge watching several of your videos.
The recent theory is that the wife died, and this is a tribute to her.
LOVE these videos analyzing the backstories and details…keep ‘em coming!
I always thought this would be one of the most ugly paintings I knew. I like it so much better now, after having seen it with your eyes! Thank you!
Great description and additional info about this painting that I wasn't aware of, and never had the opportunity to see the background in such detailed way, thanks! It is one of my favorite paintings since a watched it for the first time when I was only 8 years old in a book that belonged to my granny.
Can someone please explain why her hair looks like horns? It was something I had noticed, was this a normal style or symbolism? Because when she mentions the dog, the candle, and even the far away images near the painting that all seemed to depict death it kind of felt as if she was actually not human. Because apparently what I got from the video is that she isn't his first wife and people have no clue who she is supposed to be, kind of hinting that maybe there's still something more about her? Like what if she weren't human? Idk just a thought. I never knew I'd enjoy someone interpreting a painting and pointing out so much detail within it, I can see why it's so popular and this just became so fun and exciting for me.
They are called cornettes and they were a fashionable hairstyle at the time! I see what you're getting at because there's no reason an artist who enjoys symbolism couldn't put that into his personal work but remember despite the mystery, this is a painting someone paid for, I'm not sure a commissioner in this time period would appreciate the artist painting him holding hands with something inhuman or demonic.
So many fascinating aspects that I would not have noticed if you had not pointed them out. Beautiful
Breathtaking! Thank you!
Thank you so much!
I always remember how I felt kinda unnerved when I saw this painting for the first time in middle school. Idk, something about it still causes me to feel a bit uneasy whenever I see it.
before we had photographs, we had paintings and anonymous is the greatest artist ever, but this story is different from the idea that some of us are born artists and others don't leave a thing when they die. Belisa Barca has painted this one and I was her two lives ago ... forget everything you know about reincarnation because EVERY LIFE is a different story and remembering being Belisa happened under the worst conditions ever, which is the subject of my current life. Belisa Barca was born Isabella van Kleef (Katharina van Kleef was her mother, but Belisa never knew her mother and lived with her father in Brugge). 'De dokter is de dood' is the real title of this one and that's what I heard when my nephew showed me the painting in a book, he got as a Christmas present, months before I had the experience of being Belisa again. Dutch is my mother tongue and Flemish was hers, when Belisa was 4 or 5 years old, her father (Petrus X - Portrait of a Lady) asked his friend, Raphael Barca, to take her away from the situation and find a good family for her. Raphael took her to his Italian friend, Nicola Salieri, near Sienna and at that time, Brugge had an indoor harbor - that's when she saw two figures, one dressed in red and the other one, dressed in blue. I don't know the meaning of it because that goes too deep and my life is not comparable with her life in any sense, but there must be a reason why I remembered her, staring at the Portrait of a Lady, that hung in the vacation house of Peter's grandfather, Daniel Lobe. I often don't take notice when things happen the way I expect them to happen, but this was an important game changer - Peter had taken away everything of value when he moved out, but not this painting and that means that he knew that it was something that he was not supposed to interferre with. Afterwards, there came other lives, each with its own particularity, but this life was a 'complete' memory, the kind of memories I would use to describe my current life. Off and on, I could move into a life I had before and tell the story of that life - Chayat, for example, was a Maya high priestess that married twice the Sun God - when you'll see the movie, you will understand how that was possible and, of course, Ry'an and Amon Ra were humans, just like you and me, but they lived in a whole different period, we can't remember anymore. Belisa's paintings were very mystical - she drew what she saw in her head and it's not so difficult to understand that she was a natural born painter, so her paintings often got that naive presentation, we seldom see in the work of adult painters. My story is my own piece of art, though it didn't go into the right direction and I feel discriminated and rejected for the most part, but we can change our mentality and preserve the good things, instead of destroying them - don't call me a liar of a woman that can't accept her defeat - what I tell is TRUE and finally, it will lead to *One World Vision on Humanity* ...
this has to be one of the weirdest things I've ever read.
@@axemaster8331 -> what implicates your reaction - stranger things exist or this is completely made up by a woman, who desperately seek therapy? *Ultima Thule, The Perfect Story* shall be the title of my autobiography and it will explain how difficult it was to be respected for the person I am. I don't have to make myself so vulnerable, but it makes a difference when more people can see the signs that this is a weird moment in time - the time when everything falls into the right place again and I got some extra tools to do a good job. It doesn't cost you anything to give it a try, but debunking the whole idea makes you superior to me, isn't it - this is a once, but never again offer and when the final curtain falls, there won't be a second chance to react appropriate. Take it or leave it, you are not the one that makes the difference and RUclips is not the place where wonders will happen anyway. I'm DONE with this poisoned mentality and one shall have to find a solution anyway because HUMANITY is immortal, although people are not. This is the end of the World as we know it and the beginning of our personal engagement - help when you can make a difference and otherwise, stay out of sight!!!
I love this painting. So much symbolism and the artist's painting technique almost make the figures appear 3-D.
Thank you. Excellent analysis
Thanks!
These paintings are amazing. These artists were amazing in how they painted very exact detail.
Cherries bloom in early spring....
I was going to say the same thing!
And also they don't look like they are in bloom, all I see is cherries on that tree, they are well past bloom. I'm confused.
@@emilymann1175 my thought exactly. Not in bloom, fruiting! Also, if fruiting, why not a pregnancy?
What? A misused word?? This entire channel should shut down and the painting thrown out.
@@kentbehrens2814 fruit without the bloom. hmmm maybe she died in pregnancy but the child lived?
This vid was quite interesting and informative. I do enjoy looking "into" a painting, and finding out about its story. Thank you for the post
He looks like Voldemort's nephew.
Incredible! The intricacy is amazing! Love it! ❤
One think I don't understand is why the faces in pictures of this era are often unrealistic. The artist clearly has the skill to do better based on all of the other detail in the painting.
I think it relates to artistic movements, standards of attractiveness / beauty trends, and status symbols. Through history, these things have changed and the stylization of portraits reflects those shifting values. After all, it was expensive to commission art, so the style in which people were painted was part of that overall statement about their tastes and socioeconomic standing. You can observe the shifting tastes throughout time, like the frolicking, puckered-lip ‘porcelain doll’ look you see in portraits of the Rococo era.
People in today's world have amazing cameras on their phone and yet, so many people facetune and Photoshop their face or body to look poreless, younger, slimmer, taller, bigger ass, bigger lips, muscles, tanned or pale. People want to fit the beauty standards of today, the way the people in the past wanted to fit the beauty standards of the time. I paint in oils and EVERY TIME I do somebody's portrait they say the same thing _"Make me look pretty/ handsome, and don't accentuate XYZ"._ 🙄🙄
Besides, there's also trends in art too, that's why many paintings have a combo of beauty standards and art style trends that can be seen of the time.
@@ophilianecr I take your point about people wanting to look good but, who wants to look ugly?
When everything else is highly skilled except a few details, it means it's a stylistic choice.
@@PanglossDr omg. Beauty standards change dude. Who wants to look like they have sausage lips due to an allergic reaction??? Yet plenty of people get their face pumped full of filler! You only *think* they're ugly because you're brainwashed to believe in different beauty standards 🙄
Great video, thanks! It's really interesting to read everybody's take on it.
I like the theory that the painting represents a contract for her to act on his behalf - basically a Power of Attorney. This makes more sense than an engagement or wedding, because (to me) she's definitely depicted as pregnant, even allowing that she's holding her gown bunched up. So it's likely that they're already married.
So the two people in the mirror would be witnesses to the contract, and it also makes sense of Van Eyck's otherwise-odd signature in the middle of the work - he's signing it as a witness: "I was here" rather than "I painted this."
If this all is the case, then it's a really powerful statement - Arnolfini trusts his wife, her intelligence and judgment. It's such a great painting because in spite of the stiff poses and all the symbolism, it seems clear that they're in a loving, affectionate marriage - the bed, the bare feet, the dog (fidelity), the oranges and cherries for fertility (literally fruitfulness).
I am not sure how long I could keep this hanging in the House! LOL
Saw this painting in person once. It’s quite humbling yet fascinating to see, especially given how small it is.
At 1:13, who else thinks he looks like Putin?
The painting really is quite spectacular.