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''The Arnolfini Portrait'' is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It is also known as ''The Arnolfini Wedding'', ''The Arnolfini Marriage'', ''The Arnolfini Double Portrait'' or the ''Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife'', among other titles. The painting is a small full-length double portrait, which is believed to represent the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and possibly his wife,〔Stockstad Cothren〕 presumably in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the more original and complex paintings in Western art because of the iconography,〔Ward, John. "Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck's Paintings". ''Artibus et Historiae'', Vol. 15, No. 29 (1994), pp. 9–53〕 the unusual geometric orthogonal perspective,〔Elkins, John, "On the Arnolfini Portrait and the Lucca Madonna: Did Jan van Eyck Have a Perspectival System?". ''The Art Bulletin'', Vol. 73, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 53–62〕 the use of the mirror to reflect the space,〔Ward, John L. "On the Mathematics of the Perspective of the "Arnolfini Portrait" and similar works of Jan van Eyck", ''Art Bulletin'', Vol. 65, No. 4 (1983) p.680〕〔Seidel, Linda. "Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait": Business as Usual?". ''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 16, No. 1 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 54–86〕 and that the portrait is considered unique by some art historians as the record of a marriage contract in the form of a painting.〔Harbison, Craig. "Sexuality and Social Standing in Arnolfini's Double Portrait". ''Renaissance Quarterly'', Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 249–291〕 According to Ernst Gombrich "in its own way it was as new and revolutionary as Donatello's or Masaccio's work in Italy. A simple corner of the real world had suddenly been fixed on to a panel as if by magic ... For the first time in history the artist became the perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term".〔Gombrich, E.H., ''The Story of Art'', p. 180, Phaidon, 13th edn. 1982. ISBN 0-7148-1841-0〕 Signed and dated by van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the ''Ghent Altarpiece'' by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London in 1842. Van Eyck used the technique of applying layer after layer of thin translucent glazes to create a painting with an intensity of both tone and colour. The glowing colours also help to highlight the realism, and to show the material wealth and opulence of Arnolfini's world. Van Eyck took advantage of the longer drying time of oil paint, compared to tempera, to blend colours by painting wet-in-wet to achieve subtle variations in light and shade to heighten the illusion of three-dimensional forms. The medium of oil paint also permitted van Eyck to capture surface appearance and distinguish textures precisely. He also rendered the effects of both direct and diffuse light by showing the light from the window on the left reflected by various surfaces. It has been suggested that he used a magnifying glass in order to paint the minute details such as the individual highlights on each of the amber beads hanging beside the mirror. The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for "its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it".〔Dunkerton, Jill, et al., ''Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery'', page 258. National Gallery Publications, 1991. ISBN 0-300-05070-4〕 Whatever meaning is given to the scene and its details, and there has been much debate on this, according to Craig Harbison the painting "is the only fifteenth-century Northern panel to survive in which the artist's contemporaries are shown engaged in some sort of action in a contemporary interior. It is indeed tempting to call this the first genre painting – a painting of everyday life – of modern times".〔Harbison, 1991, 33 (a claim that might not be agreed by everyone)〕 ==Description== The painting is generally in very good condition, though with small losses of original paint and damages, which have mostly been retouched. Infrared reflectograms of the painting show many small alterations, or pentimenti, in the underdrawing: to both faces, to the mirror, and to other elements.〔Campbell 1998, 186–191 for all this section, except as otherwise indicated.〕 The couple are shown in an upstairs room with a chest and a bed in it during early summer as indicated by the fruit on the cherry tree outside the window. The room probably functioned as a reception room, as it was the fashion in France and Burgundy where beds in reception rooms were used as seating, except, for example, when a mother with a new baby received visitors. The window has six interior wooden shutters, but only the top opening has glass, with clear bulls-eye pieces set in blue, red and green stained glass.〔 The two figures are very richly dressed; despite the season both their outer garments, his tabard and her dress, are trimmed and fully lined with fur. The furs may be the especially expensive sable for him and ermine or miniver for her. He wears a hat of plaited straw dyed black, as often worn in the summer at the time. His tabard was more purple than it appears now (as the pigments have faded over time) and may be intended to be silk velvet (another very expensive item). Underneath he wears a doublet of patterned material, probably silk damask. Her dress has elaborate ''dagging'' (cloth folded and sewn together, then cut and frayed decoratively) on the sleeves, and a long train. Her blue underdress is also trimmed with white fur.〔 Although the woman's plain gold necklace and the rings that both wear are the only jewellery visible, both outfits would have been enormously expensive, and appreciated as such by a contemporary viewer. There may be an element of restraint in their clothes (especially the man) befitting their merchant status – portraits of aristocrats tend to show gold chains and more decorated cloth,〔 although "the restrained colours of the man's clothing correspond to those favoured by Duke Phillip of Burgundy".〔Harbison 1991, 37〕 The interior of the room has other signs of wealth; the brass chandelier is large and elaborate by contemporary standards, and would have been very expensive. It would probably have had a mechanism with pulley and chains above, to lower it for managing the candles (possibly omitted from the painting for lack of room). The convex mirror at the back, in a wooden frame with scenes of The Passion painted behind glass, is shown larger than such mirrors could actually be made at this date – another discreet departure from realism by van Eyck. There is also no sign of a fireplace (including in the mirror), nor anywhere obvious to put one. Even the oranges casually placed to the left are a sign of wealth; they were very expensive in Burgundy, and may have been one of the items dealt in by Arnolfini. Further signs of luxury are the elaborate bed-hangings and the carvings on the chair and bench against the back wall (to the right, partly hidden by the bed), also the small Oriental carpet on the floor by the bed; many owners of such expensive objects placed them on tables, as they still do in the Netherlands.〔〔 The view in the mirror shows two figures just inside the door that the couple are facing. The second figure, wearing red, is presumably the artist although, unlike Velázquez in Las Meninas, he does not seem to be painting. Scholars have made this assumption based on the appearance of figures wearing red head-dresses in some other van Eyck works (e.g., the Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) and the figure in the background of the Madonna with Chancellor Rolin). The dog is an early form of the breed now known as the Brussels griffon.〔 The painting is signed, inscribed and dated on the wall above the mirror: "''Johannes de eyck fuit hic 1434''" ("Jan van Eyck was here 1434"). The inscription looks as if it were painted in large letters on the wall, as was done with proverbs and other phrases at this period. Other surviving van Eyck signatures are painted in trompe l'oeil on the wooden frame of his paintings, so that they appear to have been carved in the wood.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Arnolfini Portrait」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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