The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Jan van Eyck
Oil paint, oak panel · 82.2 x 60 cm
A merchant couple stand for a portrait crammed with tiny, disputed symbols.
Van Eyck's 1434 couple stand in a richly furnished room, a convex mirror behind them reflecting the whole scene — and the painter himself. Dazzling in its microscopic oil detail, it is a landmark of Northern Renaissance realism and hidden symbolism.
What you're looking at
The mirror on the back wall is the reason to zoom. It is convex, it reflects the whole room from behind, and it contains two more figures standing in the doorway where we are — one of them presumably van Eyck. Ten scenes of the Passion ring it, each one a few millimetres across and each one finished. Above it he wrote, in flourishing script, that Jan van Eyck was here, 1434, which is a signature behaving like a witness statement. The single lit candle in a daylit chandelier, the discarded pattens, the dog and the oranges on the sill have all been read as symbols for six centuries. She is not pregnant; that is the cut of the gown.
On a Frame TV
About 3:4, so the matted file. The clean crop would cut the mirror or the chandelier, and everything interesting in this painting is at the top and bottom edges. Rich, dark and detailed — it needs a large panel and a room where people get close enough to look.
National Gallery · Visit it in London →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Jan van Eyck.
