The Arnolfini Portrait: The Mirror That Sees Everything
There's a mirror at the back of the painting. A small round mirror, convex, hanging on the wall between the two figures.
By Artedusa
••13 min read
The Arnolfini Portrait: The Mirror That Sees Everything
There's a mirror at the back of the painting. A small round mirror, convex, hanging on the wall between the two figures. In this mirror, you see the entire scene reflected. The couple from behind. The room. The window. And two other people standing in the doorway. Witnesses. One of them might be the painter himself, Jan van Eyck, who signed above the mirror in elegant Gothic letters: "Johannes de Eyck fuit hic. 1434." Jan van Eyck was here. 1434.
This isn't just a signature. It's testimony. Legal attestation. Van Eyck certifies he was present. That he saw. That this scene took place. The Arnolfini Portrait, painted in Bruges in 1434, isn't just a marriage portrait. It's a painted contract, a legal document transformed into absolute masterpiece, the most mysterious painting in art history.
Look at them. He, dressed in a dark fur coat and black hat, extends his right hand as if taking an oath. She, in a green dress trimmed with ermine, places her left hand in her husband's. Their faces are grave, solemn, almost disturbing. This isn't a joyful wedding. It's a ritual, a commitment before witnesses. And the principal witness is us. You. Me. Everyone who has looked at this painting for nearly six hundred years.
Bruges, 1434: Europe's Richest City
To understand the Arnolfini Portrait, you must understand Bruges in 1434. It's the Wall Street of the late Middle Ages. The financial heart of Northern Europe. The city where all trade routes between Italy, England, the Germanic Hansa, and France converge. Colossal fortunes are made and lost in Bruges' exchange halls. Italian merchants—Florentine, Genoese, Venetian, Lucchese—settle in the city, create trading posts, finance princes, lend to kings.
Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini is one of them. A Lucchese merchant established in Bruges, he trades silk, luxury cloth, spices. He's immensely wealthy. He frequents the court of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, the most powerful man in the Low Countries. He lends money, lots of money, to the duke. In exchange, he obtains privileges, tax exemptions, commercial monopolies.
Giovanni marries a young woman whose exact identity remains debated. Probably Costanza Trenta, also from a Lucchese merchant family established in Bruges. The marriage isn't a sentimental affair. It's a merger of companies, an alliance of capital. Feelings have nothing to do with it.
And Jan van Eyck paints this marriage. But he doesn't paint a celebration. He paints a notarized act. A document proving the marriage took place, before witnesses, according to legal forms. In medieval Flemish law, a marriage could be validated by simple mutual consent exchange before two witnesses. No priest needed, no church needed. Just two people who promise themselves to each other, and two others who attest.
Van Eyck's painting is this attestation. The mirror reflects the witnesses. The signature affirms: I was there, I saw, it's true. The painting becomes legal proof.
Van Eyck: The Truth Obsessive
Jan van Eyck is a maniacal genius. He doesn't paint quickly. He works slowly, methodically, accumulating translucent layers of oil paint to create depth, texture, light effects that seem to defy nature's laws. His paintings resemble windows open onto reality. But a reality more real than nature, hyper-realistic, hallucinated.
In the Arnolfini Portrait, every detail is rendered with obsessive precision. Look at the hairs of Giovanni's fur coat. You can almost count them one by one. The fibers of the Oriental carpet. The grooves in the wooden floor. The oranges placed on the chest near the window—oranges imported at gold prices from southern Spain, symbol of ostentatious wealth. The rosary hanging on the wall. The broom near the bed. Each object is painted as if it really existed, as if you could reach out and grasp it.
But Van Eyck doesn't just copy reality. He transfigures it. He transforms each object into symbol. The oranges aren't just oranges. They evoke Eden, paradise lost, pre-fall purity. The small dog in the foreground isn't just a dog. It's a symbol of marital fidelity. The slippers abandoned on the floor—the red one near the man, the brown one near the woman—aren't just shoes. They recall the biblical command to Moses before the burning bush: "Remove your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground."
Van Eyck constructs symbolic realism. Everything is true and everything is sign. You're looking at a 15th-century Flemish chamber with its furniture, everyday objects, light entering through the window. But you're also looking at painted theology, a visual sermon on marriage, fidelity, divine grace sanctifying carnal union.
The Mirror: The Painting's True Subject
Return to the mirror. This small convex circle at the composition's exact center. It's the painting's true subject. Not the couple. The mirror.
Van Eyck paints a convex mirror with stunning precision. The optical distortion is perfect. You see the entire room reflected, compressed into this small circle. The two spouses from behind. The window behind them. The open door. And two silhouettes standing in the doorway.
One wears red, the other blue. Who are they? The marriage witnesses. Probably Van Eyck himself and an assistant. The painter inscribes his presence in the painting. He doesn't just sign it. He represents himself. Discreetly, tiny, distorted by the convex mirror, but present.
Around the mirror, ten circular medallions represent Passion of Christ scenes. The crucifixion, the resurrection. Suffering and redemption. The mirror isn't a simple decorative object. It's an all-seeing eye. A divine, omniscient eye. God witnesses this marriage. God is witness. Humans can lie, cheat, forget. The mirror never lies.
In medieval Christian tradition, the mirror symbolizes the Virgin Mary, "spotless mirror" perfectly reflecting divine light. It also symbolizes truth, knowledge, conscience. Van Eyck inscribes all these meanings into his small convex circle.
But there's something else. Something more troubling. By painting the scene's reflection, Van Eyck paints what the spouses don't see. Their backs. The door behind them. The outside world. The mirror sees more than the painting's characters. It sees more than us, spectators. It occupies an impossible, omniscient, divine viewpoint.
That's the painting's genius. Van Eyck creates a vertiginous mise en abyme. The painting represents a scene. The mirror in the painting represents the same scene from another angle. And we, spectators, we watch both simultaneously, prisoners of an endless visual loop.
Is She Pregnant? The Green Dress Mystery
Look at the woman. Her green dress swells before her belly. She looks pregnant. Generations of art historians believed it. The painting would represent a rushed marriage because the bride expects a child.
Except she's probably not pregnant. It's fashion. In the 15th century, in Flemish and Burgundian courts, women's dresses were worn very high under the bust and very ample at belly level. Elegant women gathered them up in front to walk, creating this ventral swelling effect. It's a sign of wealth—look how much fabric I have to waste—and elegance.
But Van Eyck plays on ambiguity. He knows this pose evokes pregnancy. He even accentuates it. The woman's left hand is placed on her rounded belly, protective, maternal gesture. Her face is pale, her features drawn. She could be pregnant. Or sick. Or just solemn.
This ambiguity isn't accidental. Marriage, in Christian theology, has procreation as its primary end. "Be fruitful and multiply." The woman who marries accepts becoming a mother. Her body is no longer only hers. It belongs to this biological and sacred function. Van Eyck paints this transition. The young woman dressed in green—color of fertility, spring, renewal—accepts her destiny.
But there's a strange detail. Behind her, against the wall, a bed. A luxurious bed, with red curtains. But the curtains are open. The bed is visible, exposed. In the 15th century, the marital bed was normally hidden, protected by closed hangings. Showing the open bed was transgressive. It was publicly admitting marriage's carnal reality.
Van Eyck hides nothing. He paints the bed. He paints the hand on the belly. He paints the nuptial chamber as both sacred and sexual space. Marriage isn't only a legal contract. It's a union of bodies. And this union, under the divine mirror's gaze, is legitimate, sanctified, holy.
The Chandelier: One Single Lit Candle
Above the spouses, a brass chandelier. Six branches. But only one lit candle. One single flame, on the man's side.
Why? Interpretations abound. Some see a Christological symbol—Christ, light of the world. Others think the single candle represents God's eye, always vigilant. Still others suggest it was a Flemish custom to light a candle during home weddings.
But there's a darker interpretation. One single candle lit on the man's side. The woman is in shadow. The man brings light. The woman receives. The man is active. The woman is passive. Medieval marriage isn't a union of equals. It's a hierarchy. The man dominates. The woman obeys.
Van Eyck paints this reality without denouncing it, without celebrating it either. He shows it. That's how it is. In 1434, in Bruges, in the merchant bourgeoisie, marriage is a property transfer. The woman passes from her father's authority to her husband's. She brings a dowry. In exchange, she receives protection, social status, legitimacy for her children.
The single candle illuminates this transaction. Coldly. Solemnly. Without romanticism.
The National Gallery, 1842: When England Steals Flanders' Soul
For four hundred years, the Arnolfini Portrait remains in private hands. The painting passes from collection to collection, from Spain to England, miraculously surviving wars, looting, fires. In 1842, London's National Gallery buys it for 730 pounds sterling. A considerable sum for the time.
The painting becomes instantly famous. Victorians adore Van Eyck. They see in him a master of precision, morality, bourgeois domesticity. The Arnolfini Portrait embodies everything Victorian England admires: stable marriage, wealth acquired through work, discreet piety, moral order.
They're wrong, obviously. Van Eyck wasn't a Victorian moralist. He painted for amoral Italian merchants who trafficked silk and loaned at usury. But no matter. The painting becomes icon. It's reproduced, copied, studied, analyzed to obsession.
In the 20th century, art historians go wild. Erwin Panofsky, the great German iconologist, publishes in 1934 a monumental study demonstrating the painting represents a clandestine marriage validated solely by witnesses' presence. His thesis holds authority for fifty years.
Then other scholars contest. Some assert it's not a marriage but a commemorative portrait painted after the woman's death. Others suggest it's a betrothal contract, not a marriage. Still others think Van Eyck was just painting a rich couple who wanted a beautiful painting to decorate their living room.
The truth? We don't know. We'll probably never know. Archive documents are incomplete. Parish registers burned. The Arnolfinis' letters disappeared. Only the painting remains. Mute. Enigmatic. Refusing to reveal its secret.
Why This Painting Still Haunts Us
Six hundred years after its creation, the Arnolfini Portrait continues to fascinate. Why? It's not the subject. A 15th-century bourgeois marriage, frankly, who cares?
It's not the technique either, however stunning. Van Eyck painted other masterpieces—the Ghent Altarpiece, the Virgin of Chancellor Rolin—technically just as impressive.
No, what fascinates is the mystery. This persistent impression that we don't see everything. That something's hidden. The mirror shows us what we shouldn't see. The signature affirms a presence that should remain invisible. Symbols accumulate but their exact meaning escapes us.
And then there's this unease. This feeling of intrusion. When you look at the Arnolfini Portrait, you feel like you're violating intimacy. You're in their bedroom. You surprise them at a solemn, private moment. They don't smile. They don't pose for you. They ignore you. You're the voyeur. The uninvited witness.
Van Eyck created the first truly modern painting. Not modern in style—it's late Gothic, ultra-traditional. Modern in consciousness. For the first time in Western painting history, an artist paints people who don't look at us. Who exist independently of our gaze. Who have their own life, their own secrets, their own thoughts.
Before Van Eyck, painting characters always looked at the viewer or God. After Van Eyck, painting becomes a window onto a world that exists without us. We can look at it. We cannot enter it.
The Mirror Looks at Us
There's one last thing. A troubling thing few people notice.
The convex mirror at the painting's center reflects the entire scene. The spouses, the room, the window, the witnesses in the door. But it also theoretically reflects you. Me. Us who look at the painting.
Obviously, Van Eyck couldn't paint us. We weren't born. But he created a space for us. By painting the all-seeing mirror, he painted an eye that sees us. That saw us. That will always see us.
When you stand before the Arnolfini Portrait at the National Gallery, you're exactly where Van Eyck stood in 1434. You occupy his place. You're the witness. The painting assigns you this function. You certify this scene took place. You become accomplice.
That's Van Eyck's ultimate genius. He created a painting that transforms each viewer into witness, guarantor, co-creator of the represented scene. The Arnolfinis' marriage took place only because we continue to look at it. As soon as we look away, it ceases to exist.
The mirror looks at us. And as long as we look at it, Giovanni and his wife will remain there, standing in their Bruges chamber, hand in hand, frozen for eternity in their strange nuptial ballet.
Jan van Eyck was here. 1434.
And we are here. Now. Always witnesses. Always trapped in the mirror that sees everything.
The Arnolfini Portrait: The Mirror That Sees Everything | Art History
