In 1934, the renowned historian Erwin Panofsky published a study (see The Flemish Primitives) on The Arnolfini Marriage (1434). The reading he made of Jan van Eyck’s painting became the canonical interpretation of the enigmatic painting: those portrayed would be the merchant Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife Giovanna Cenami at the moment of getting married in privacy, in a bedroom instead of in a church (the priest and the witness would be the figures that appear reflected in the mirror).
At present, both the nature of the scene and the identity of the protagonists are in question. Not even the National Gallery, where the painting has been on display since 1843 (after “mysteriously” disappearing from the royal collections during the Napoleonic invasion), supports this theory.
Interpretations have followed one another over the years: a self-portrait of the painter and his wife, an angel announcing the Virgin and even a palmist reading the palm of a pregnant woman.
One of the latest and most suggestive hypotheses, raised by the expert in medieval painting Margaret Koster, talks about it being a commemorative portrait, a funeral tribute by Arnolfini to his first wife, Costanza Trenta, who died – perhaps during childbirth – a year before the date of the painting.
Jean-Philippe Postel draws on Koster’s interpretative thread in his essay The Arnolfini affair. Inspired by the famous Blow-Up photography sequence (1966), Postel examines the painting, magnifying its details to reveal what is not seen at first glance. Armed with the few documents that have been preserved on him, the extensive bibliography that he has generated and a good magnifying glass, this retired doctor has applied “the methods of clinical observation to a pictorial work”.
The result of this “forensic analysis” is a reading of The Arnolfini Marriage as fascinating as it is daring. Postel’s dissection of Van Eyck’s work is admirable in its meticulousness. However, the resulting thesis (better not reveal it, because the book is enjoyed almost like a detective story), although it is perfectly argued, borders on overinterpretation.
Postel may not have solved the mystery of this painting, but his imaginative investigation makes us see it with different eyes.
