Arnolfini Essay Research Paper Jan van Eycks

Arnolfini Essay, Research Paper

Jan van Eyck?s ?Arnolfini? Portrait

An essay written by a renowned art historian, Erwin Panofsky, discusses the controversy

over a famous painting. The disputation was over the identification of the two people portrayed

in the painting. The painting was a portrait thought to be Giovanni Arnofili and his wife, and the

artist was Jan van Eyck. Panofsky wrote this essay to prove that this painting found in 1815,

which he refers to as the ?London portrait?, is identical to a picture which was once acquired by

Queen Mary of Hungary, among others. The ?Hapsburg painting?, referring to the one owned by

the Queen, was lost in 1789. In my essay, I will show the proof given by Panofsky that the two

pictures are, in fact, the same.

By tracing the provenance of the paintings, Panofsky validates his theory that the two may

very well be just one. The theory that the two paintings are but one has been named the

?Orthodox Theory?. Since the Hapsburg painting was lost in 1789 and the London portrait

wasn?t discovered until 1815, it is more than possible that the two paintings are the same. The

gap in time between the loss of one and discovery of the other painting is thought by Panofsky

due to someone running off with the painting during the Napoleon war.

Panofsky?s essay holds much evidence to support the Orthodox Theory. For instance, the

precise inventories of the Hapsburg painting describe a man and a woman standing in a room,

joining hands with a mirror reflecting them from behind. That description is identical to the

London painting. Also, both paintings were dated 1434. Still, there are some controversies to

explore despite the obvious descriptions of the paintings. First, there was an inscription on the

London painting that read ?Johannes de Eyck fuit hic?. If this was translated in Latin, it would

read with grammatical errors, ?Johannes van Eyck was here?. Since there were some doubts

about that translation, it was taken by some to mean ?This is Johannes van Eyck?. This

interpretation made the people in the London painting Johannes and his wife, not Arnolfini. This

was a serious doubt to the Orthodox theory.

Another reason disagreement took place over the painting was because of a man who

wrote a biography of van Eyck, Carl Vermander. Vermander described the Hapsburg painting as

?a man and a woman taking each other by the right hand…and they were married by Fides who

joined them to each other?. This description would make Fides a human being, and there is no

third person in the London painting. Panofsky, being a commendable art historian, questioned

Vermander?s reliability. Panofsky openly stated that any source from Vermander was

untrustworthy, mainly because an inventory as descriptive as the one of Queen Mary?s paintings

would not possibly leave out a full sized figure as he mentioned. Also, by researching

Vermander?s information, he found that his source was Marcus van Vaernewyck, a man who

himself had never even seen the painting, nor ever spoke of it before in any of his other writings.

The description of the Hapsburg painting given by Vermander was almost exact to that of

Vaernewyck?s except for a slight change which made it obvious that Vermander had altered it

adding his own words of a painting he?d never seen. This should make it clear that it is extremely

important to make sure your sources are credible, and also that translations or restating of quotes

can be incorrectly amplified and should always be checked.

After proving Vermander wrong, and giving himself incredible credibility, Panofsky makes

another point about the Catholic background. In the Catholic dogma, before the Council of

Trent, it was unnecessary to have a priest or a witness at a wedding ceremony in order for it to be

valid. All that was needed was the mutual consent by words and actions. I believe Panofsky

brought up this point to again prove there was not a third person, and to show that the painting

was to be used as validity of their marriage. It was known that marriages before the Council,

lacking a priest or any witnesses, would more often than not end in tragedy. To better explain

this, Panofsky includes a short anecdote about a wife who fell in love with someone else, and the

husband could not prove their marriage was valid. Therefore, she left her husband and married

the father of Willibald Pirckheimer. The story showed that without witnesses, marriages often

tended to end in tragedy due to lack of proof. He uses this story as a legitimate reason that van

Eyck painted that portrait and the inscription was to be read ?Johannes van Eyck was here?. By

doing so, van Eyck was not only an artist, but he also acted as a witness of the marriage.

Van Eyck?s marriage date and the birth of his first child were also discussed by Panofsky

in some detail. In order to prove that the inscription meant what he thought, he showed that it

could not possi

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать