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1434Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Jan van Eyck Paints the Arnolfini Portrait

A Bruges merchant and his wife, rendered in oil with almost photographic detail

On the timeline · around 1434 · The Early RenaissanceThe Early RenaissanceJan van Eyck Paints the Arnolfini Portrait14101420143014401450

Quick facts

Artist
Jan van Eyck
Medium
Oil on oak panel
Location painted
Bruges
Now in
National Gallery, London

What happened

In Bruges in 1434, the Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck completed a full-length double portrait, most likely of the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, in the reception room of their house. Van Eyck built up the image in oil paint through several thin, translucent glazes, a technique that let him render the texture of fur, brass, and glass with a precision tempera paint could not match, and he included a small convex mirror on the back wall that reflects the room, and the painter himself, from the other side. Working in Flanders rather than Italy, van Eyck was developing oil-painting techniques in parallel with the Italian Renaissance rather than as part of it.

Why it matters

The Arnolfini Portrait shows how far oil paint's realism had advanced in the Low Countries by the 1430s, decades before oil technique became standard practice in Italy, and it stands as the outstanding example of the parallel Northern European tradition that would later feed into, and eventually merge with, the Italian Renaissance through artists like Durer.

How we know

The painting survives in the National Gallery, London, which dates and describes it from technical examination and documentary research into the Arnolfini family and van Eyck's Bruges career.

Sources

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Jan van Eyck Paints the Arnolfini Portrait · The Renaissance · SourcedStory