Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, tempera and oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:06] We’re in the National Gallery, and we’re looking at Jan van Eyck’s portrait of…well, I learned this painting as the “Arnolfini Wedding Portrait.”
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:16] So did I.
Dr. Zucker: [0:17] But there’s been a lot of scholarship subsequently, and there’s a lot of disagreement over what this painting actually represents.
Dr. Harris: [0:24] But the National Gallery, which probably represents the most authoritative view right now, the most widely accepted, says that in fact this is not an actual wedding taking place or being witnessed, as you and I were taught, but that it’s simply a double portrait of a couple who are already married.
Dr. Zucker: [0:41] Some scholars have suggested that perhaps it’s a memorial portrait and the woman on the right actually had passed away the previous year, but that’s only one of a variety of theories. We’re not even sure which Arnolfini this actually is. What we do know is that whoever’s represented here was an Italian merchant who worked in Bruges.
Dr. Harris: [0:58] And Bruges was a thriving economic town in the early 15th century.
Dr. Zucker: [1:03] His wealth is quite apparent throughout this portrait.
Dr. Harris: [1:05] In a way, the portrait is about his wealth. Everything from both of their clothing to the furnishings of the house.
Dr. Zucker: [1:13] Some have suggested that perhaps this is a witnessing of the male actually giving a kind of authority to the woman in legal affairs.
Dr. Harris: [1:23] I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly what this represents. The thing is that it’s always seemed to me that it can’t simply just be a double portrait, because it really looks like something important is happening. They’re joining their hands. Their shoes are off, which can…
Dr. Zucker: [1:39] Now, those all have symbolic value. And this is a period when there’s tremendous importance put on symbolism. The shoes being off, for instance, as you mentioned, is often a reference to a kind of sacred event taking place.
Dr. Harris: [1:50] We have a single candle in the chandelier, which I was taught was a symbol of the presence of God, but again we’re just not really sure. But the way that they’re joined together, the way his hand is up — perhaps he’s just greeting the visitors who we see in the mirror.
Dr. Zucker: [2:07] There are two people who are in the doorway, actually wonderfully situated where we would be looking at this painting.
Dr. Harris: [2:13] It does seem to me like something significant is going on.
Dr. Zucker: [2:16] There is a kind of witnessing taking place.
Dr. Zucker: [2:17] I think that that’s reinforced by the signature that we see above the mirror and below the chandelier that says “Johannes van Eyck fuit hic” or translated, “Johannes van Eyck was here.” There is that sense of the artist’s presence, the artist witnessing, the artist being here in this room with these figures.
Dr. Zucker: [2:39] Let’s go about this painting, and really look at the different elements, because there are many things that we do agree about as art historians.
[2:45] The mirror in the center is one of the most compelling elements. You have, not only in a sense the greater visual reality of this room depicted, because we can actually see as if we’re standing in the back of the room looking forward. But you see actually…
Dr. Harris: [2:58] Scenes from the Passion of Christ.
Dr. Zucker: [3:00] Painted on the backpieces of glass panels that are set into that wooden frame.
Dr. Harris: [3:05] I have to say that it’s hard to get a sense of this when you’re watching a video, or looking at illustrations in a book, but those little roundels around the mirror, how big would you say those are?
Dr. Zucker: [3:15] They are, I would say, about half the size of my…
Dr. Harris: [3:20] Half an inch.
Dr. Zucker: [3:18] Half the size of my fingernail.
Dr. Harris: [3:21] They’re tiny, and yet we can make out what scenes from the Passion of Christ are represented there. There’s that attention to detail. Detail painted in enormous clarity that we associate with the Northern Renaissance.
Dr. Zucker: [3:33] Some of this painting seems to have been painted with a single-hair brush. Absolutely.
Dr. Harris: [3:36] If you look at the hair of the dog, for example.
Dr. Zucker: [3:39] So, the dog is an interesting element because you wouldn’t expect to see a dog in a formal portrait. How many wedding photographs have you seen with a dog in it?
Dr. Harris: [3:45] Actually, dogs are common symbols in paintings of couples, because the dog is a symbol of fidelity or loyalty.
Dr. Zucker: [3:52] Of course. There’s tremendous attention that’s been paid to the dress of both figures. And there’s a kind of curious element, because they’re wearing fur-lined clothing, and yet there is fruit on the tree outside. It’s a warm moment, and yet they’re wearing their finest winter wear. That’s an issue that has, I think, perplexed art historians.
Dr. Harris: [4:12] That fruit on the windowsill may also be a symbol — or a sign, I should say — of their wealth since oranges were very expensive in Flanders.
Dr. Zucker: [4:22] Some have suggested that that was one of the items that the Arnolfinis actually imported. A reference to the source of their wealth.
Dr. Harris: [4:28] This is a good example of one of the ways that it’s easy to misinterpret. It looks as though the scene is taking place in what we would think of as a bedroom, in a private space. In fact, bedrooms were not that in the 15th century. They were rooms where you received visitors.
Dr. Zucker: [4:44] And a symbol of wealth. And there are all kinds of symbols of wealth here. Beyond the oranges, if you look at the carpet down on the floor, that would have been a symbol of both taste and wealth.
Dr. Harris: [4:53] Look at the way that the…we see those tiny little cuts in the green robe that she wears. Those heavy…
Dr. Zucker: [5:01] That’s been frayed out.
Dr. Harris: [5:03] It’s amazing.
Dr. Zucker: [5:04] That was very fashionable.
Dr. Harris: [5:06] The crispness of the lace that she wears around her head.
Dr. Zucker: [5:10] Now, there’s a mistake that is often made, which is people often look at the bulge of her belly and suggest that she’s pregnant. We’re pretty clear that she’s not. This was very much an expression of the fashion of the day.
Dr. Harris: [5:22] Another way that it’s easy to misinterpret based on what we know in the 21st century.
Dr. Zucker: [5:27] Van Eyck is, I think, critically important not only because of the brilliance of his painting, but because he was using oil paint in a way that had never really been used. He’s able to create a kind of luminous quality, a richness of color that tempera simply couldn’t achieve.
Dr. Harris: [5:41] Yeah, and he’s doing this because he’s applying thin, multiple layers or glazes of thinned-out oil painting so that each layer is translucent and layer after layer applied creates these incredibly deep, rich colors.
Dr. Zucker: [5:56] Which allows him to then produce this rich, luminous, incredibly subtle light. Look at the way that light comes in through this room and moves across the faces of the figures, their hands, across the furniture.
Dr. Harris: [6:11] On the chandelier, the little shadow cast by that bottom bar of the window. There’s a real love of light here that also is very typical of the Northern Renaissance.
Dr. Zucker: [6:22] And the way that he can brilliantly pick up a color, like on the oranges, for instance, or define an object such as Arnolfini’s shoes.
Dr. Harris: [6:29] The figures are kind of elongated. The base of the room seems very cramped. It’s filled with all of these material objects.
Dr. Zucker: [6:37] It’s certainly not perspectively correct.
Dr. Harris: [6:39] Right, and both of those things — that lack of interest in human anatomy and a rational, perspectively correct space — really tell us that we’re not in the Italian Renaissance. We’re in the Northern Renaissance. That love of texture, the use of oil paint, the attention to detail. Van Eyck is a master — or the master — of the Northern Renaissance.
[7:01] [music]
Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, tempera and oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London), photo: Dr. Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
But is she pregnant?
Jan van Eyck’s equally enigmatic and iconic Arnolfini Portrait often prompts art history newcomers and experts alike to ask: is the female figure pregnant? Questions about the presence of pregnancy in the portrait are so common that the London National Gallery’s website addresses the issue on the second line of the painting’s official explanatory text.
Jan Van Eyck, Dress (detail), The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, tempera and oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London), photo: Dr. Steven Zucker CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Is the woman in the Arnolfini Portrait pregnant? The short answer is no. The illusion is caused because the figure collects her extensive skirts and presses the excess fabric to her abdomen where it springs outwards and creates a domelike silhouette. Her hand position is regularly read by modern viewers as a universal acknowledgment of pregnancy, but in the Renaissance this gesture would have been understood instead as a sign of adherence to female decorum. Young Renaissance women were encouraged to keep their hands demurely clasped around their girdles when in public, as this was seen as polite and unobtrusive.
The issue of pregnancy in the Arnolfini Portrait is a complex one: the figure is not literally pregnant, because painting or sculpting pregnancy violated the period’s artistic customs—yet pregnancy is nevertheless present in the picture. Both pregnancy symbolism and expectation are at play within the painting.
Jan Van Eyck, Oranges (detail left) and carved bedpost depicting Saint Margaret atop a dragon (circled in red, detail right), The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, tempera and oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London), photos: Dr. Steven Zucker CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Objects alluding to future pregnancy pepper the composition, from the ripened fruit arranged on the windowsill, to the wooden statuette of Saint Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth, who is shown overcoming the dragon of heresy on the bed frame. Though it’s impossible to sever the question concerning pregnancy from this painting, we can answer it by examining both Renaissance pregnancy and dress practices.
Renaissance pregnancy
The highly-gendered Renaissance world produced widely disparate male and female lived experiences. While a man generally married in his third or fourth decade, allowing him ample time to grow his business or estate, women became brides ideally between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Women, therefore, were expected to and did spend the majority of their married lives with child.
Jan Van Eyck, Hands (detail), The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, tempera and oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London), photo: Dr. Steven Zucker CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Arnolfini’s wife is not pregnant in the picture, but period norms assumed she soon would be. Art historian Diane Wolfthal agrees that although the woman is not pictured pregnant, “the panel alludes to the proper goal of sexual relations through the wife’s protruding belly . . . her gesture . . . brings attention to her womb,”[1] and argues that the few period viewers who came into contact with the Arnolfini Portrait would have understood and recognized this signaling.
Raphael, La Donna Gravida (Portrait of a Woman), c. 1505–06, oil on panel, 66 x 52 cm (Palazzo Pitti, Florence)
Although married Renaissance women spent the majority of their premenopausal lives with child, pregnancy itself was rarely represented. Artists working across a myriad of media shied away from depicting pregnancy, most likely because the condition was thought to be indecorous.
During the Renaissance, when a woman entered into her third trimester, she generally remained at home in a ritual called confinement. Further, depicting pregnancy admitted a direct link to human sexuality. Though procreative intercourse between heterosexual married couples was the only church-sanctioned form of sexuality in the Renaissance, to portray a married woman pregnant was generally seen as improper.
Detail, Limburg Brothers, September from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, f. 9, c. 1412–16 (Musée Condé)
Rare exceptions exist, such as Raphael’s inscrutable Donna Gravida, or Portrait of an Unknown Lady attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts II, or the peasant woman toiling away in the fields in the September page of the Limbourg brothers’ Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.
But even paintings depicting the Visitation—a moment in the Gospel of Luke when Mary and Elizabeth meet and both are pregnant (Mary with Christ, and Elizabeth with St. John the Baptist)—the two biblical heroines are rarely depicted as obviously gestational, though again, there are a few exceptions (for example, Rogier van der Weyden’s Visitation).
Francseco Xanto (painter), Cup (for broth) from a birth tray c. 1530, tin glazed earthenware, 16.5 cm diameter (Victoria & Albert Museum)
Another medium that offers a glimpse into Renaissance pregnancy and childbirth are birth trays, which were popular gifts for new mothers that would include jars and bowls containing soup and sweets.
Renaissance dress and gender norms
While the Arnolfini Portrait foregrounds many domestic objects, dress takes center stage. Both outfits in the portrait are ludicrously expensive and detailed, but the woman’s clothing outshines her husband’s. This excessive disparity in color and yardage is perfectly in line with Renaissance fashion and gender difference. Men’s outfits tended to be tailored from darker fabrics to signal the wearer’s sobriety and lack of vanity. In contrast, Renaissance women’s bodies in both images and reality were potent sites of material display. An exemplary upper-class wife was required to demonstrate her husband’s wealth (through his ability to keep her adorned in the latest fashion trends) as well as the couple’s potential fertility.
Unknown artist, A Bridal Couple, c. 1470, oil on panel, 77.5 x 51 x 8.1 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art)
The woman in the Arnolfini Portrait holds her dress in a way that styles her body as seemingly pregnant. This pose is not uncommon in depictions of Renaissance women, especially in the Northern Renaissance context (see, for example, A Bridal Couple in The Cleveland Museum of Art). The odd pose was adopted for practical purposes: full Renaissance skirting forced women to pick up their gowns when they walked. The gesture likewise illuminates the wearer’s moneyed status.
According to costume historian Ann Hollander, the notorious, seemingly pregnant silhouette touted by the woman in The Arnolfini Portrait (and countless other images of women created throughout the early modern period) connoted elegance and luxury on the part of the wearer and her male keeper (for the man it was a swelled midsection). The more dramatic a woman’s curves, the more real estate to show off exquisitely tailored fabrics. The lifting of skirts likewise provided a chance to further showcase wealth by revealing contrasting undergarments (such as the blue undergown worn by the woman in the Arnolfini Portrait).
While the woman’s gown does not display an actual pregnancy, it is possible that the controversial dress is coded with pregnancy and may be read as symbolic of women’s roles in the Renaissance, including motherhood. The woman’s ample costume does not conceal or describe a pregnancy; however, it is roomy enough to easily host a future one without the need for tailoring. Its green hue could also connote fecundity, as the color was widely associated with springtime and therefore fertility and fruitfulness in the period. Additionally, the gown is lined with ermine. Art historian Jacqueline Musacchio has argued that martins and weasels in portraits (either alive or skinned) may be symbolic of pregnancy or the hope for future pregnancy. It is no accident, therefore, that mid-fifteenth century Flemish haute couture (high fashion) suggests pregnancy.
Jan Van Eyck, Cloth gathered on the floor (detail), The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, tempera and oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm (National Gallery, London), photo: Dr. Steven Zucker CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
A new question
Perhaps the question we should be asking when considering the Arnolfini Portrait is not “is the female figure pregnant?” Instead, we can consider why the female figure appears to be pregnant. The persistent illusion asks us to consider Renaissance gender roles, as well as our own beliefs concerning depictions of women in pre-modern art. The woman in the green dress is not meant to be read as actually pregnant, yet—more significantly—she lived and died in a culture that expected near-constant pregnancy from women.
