Wednesday, September 10, 2014

+60












Jan van Eyck contributed the Arnolfini Portrait in c. 1434, seemingly a self-portrait of van Eyck and his wife. This extraordinary masterwork has all the highlights of his genre. Although, the painting is presumably a commissioned portrait of a wealthy Flemish merchant, given the style of the footwear and the contemporary sandals at the rear, the meeting of light through delicate glazes with under paint of geometrical observation together with the geometric picture plane employs perspective far beyond the Italian Renaissance with a different view of God through the window. God is represented like a timepiece in the mirror on the wall creating an interior depth through the painting. Peaches are a "girls" best fruit, representing the love of the newborn and they rest by the window as if to address God's divine light with a garden view. This beautiful blessing ceremony communicates as if by design of God, by interior perspective, a harmony of intelligence.