This certainly is an odd marriage; not that of the enigmatic portrait of a pregnant woman and an Italian merchant but an attempt to marry a 15th century Dutch realist with the 19th century English brotherhood of symbolist painters whose figurehead was Dante Gabrielle Rossetti. The argument is that the Arnolfini Portrait, which the National Gallery acquired in 1842, could have been seen by Rossetti, Sir John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, all Royal Academy students at the time of the purchase, and may have inspired their search for a purer, more formal style of painting (hence ‘pre-Raphael’).
There are however no letters or other documents which substantiate the claim. Much is made of the convex mirror (a fashionable interior accessory at the time) with examples of other works with mirrors on show.
Until April 2nd at the
National Gallery, London
www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Above Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Oil on oak | The National Gallery London
Below William Holman Hunt, Il Dolce Far Niente, 1866
Oil on canvas | Private Collection
