Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-26T16:34:57.661Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sexuality and Social Standing in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Double Portrait*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Craig Harbison
Craig Harbison*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In its Visual Acuity, the Arnolfini double portrait (fig. 1) is so beguiling that few have been able to resist its spell: "a simple corner of the real world has suddenly been fixed on to a panel as by magic." But in what ways can we speak of this portrait as a realistic image? How closely, for instance, does it portray a single moment or specific event in these people's lives? Was it meant to be viewed as a marriage document or contract? The Arnolfini double portrait is unique. It is the only fifteenth–century Northern panel to survive showing presumably identifiable contemporaries engaged in some sort of dialogue in a carefully rendered contemporary interior

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 1990 , pp. 249 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Colleagues and students have greatly aided me as this project progressed: Professors James Mundy and Mark Roskill helped me sharpen my thinking in the early stages; they as well as the following people, read or heard an earlier version of this study and made helpful comments: Robert Baldwin, Anne van Buren, Miriam Chrisman, Jane Goldsmith, Dana Goodgal, Sherrill Harbison, Ann Jones, Robert A. Koch, Marilyn Lavin, Gary Niswonger, Stephen Philbrick, Peter Stallybrass, Leo Steinberg, Margaret Sullivan, Charles Talbot, Richard Trexler, and Joel Upton. Of course, all errors of judgment or fact are my own. Iris Cheney, Julia Bailey, and W. L. Wegener gave bibliographic help, as did the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Office (especially Edla Holm) at the University of Massachusetts. A graduate seminar at the University of Massachusetts in the spring of 1984 first listened to my ideas and then contributed many interesting ones of their own. All of them deserve my thanks: Michelle Alien, Christy Anderson, Maura Donohue, Catherine Egenberger, Hilary Fairbanks, Elizabeth Janus, and Karen Koehler. Julie Trudeau, another former graduate student at the university, first made helpful suggestions about the relationship of van Eyck and the court of Burgundy. Photographs were purchased with the help of a grant from the Research Council, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This article was accepted for publication in May, 1988. A final draft of the text was sent to the editor in September, 1989. Since that time two further interpretations of the Arnolfini painting have come to my attention. One by Linda Seidel, " 'Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait': Business as Usual?", appeared in Critical Inquiry 16 (1989): 55-86; to my mind, it repeats the anachronistic mistake of several authors by attributing specific documentary significance to the image. At the Historians of Netherlandish Art conference, Cleveland, 29 October, 1989, Margaret D. Carroll gave a talk entitled "Speculum Mercatorum: Jan van Eyck's Marriage of Arnolfini"; I have great sympathy with Carroll's reading of the multi-faceted nature of the image's meaning.

References

Aigremont, , Dr. Fuss- und Schuh-Symbolikund Erotik, Folkloristische und sexualwissenschaftliche Untersuchnungen. Leipzig, 1909.Google Scholar
Allende-Salazar, J. “Don Felipe de Guevara.“ Archivo Español de Arte y Archeologia 1 (1925): 189-92.Google Scholar
Baldass, Ludwig. Jan van Eyck. London,1952.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Robert. “Marriage as a Sacramental Reflection of the Passion: The Mirror in Jan van Eyck's ‘Arnolfini Wedding.’ “ Oud-Holland 98 (1984): 57–75.Google Scholar
Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experiencein Fifteenth-Century Italy. Oxford, 1972.Google Scholar
Bedaux, Jan Baptiste. “The Reality of Symbols:The Question of Disguised Symbolsin Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. ” Simiolus 16 (1986): 5–28.10.2307/3780611Google Scholar
Beenken, H. “Roger van der Weyden und Jan van Eyck.” Pantheon 25 (1940): 129-37.Google Scholar
Benton, John F. “Clio and Venus: An Historical View of Medieval Love.” In The Meaning of Courtly Love , ed. Newman, F. X., 19–42. Albany, 1968.Google Scholar
Buren, Anne van. “Un jardin d'amour de Philippe le Bon au pare du Hesdin.” La revuedu Louvre 35 (1985): 185-92.Google Scholar
Buschinger, Danielle, and Andr£ Crepin,eds. Amour, mariage et transgression aumoyen age. Göppingen, 1984.Google Scholar
Du Cange, Charles. Glossarium mediae et intimas Latinitatis. 10 vols. Paris, 1883-87. Rep., Graz, 1954.Google Scholar
Cartellieri, Otto. The Court of Burgundy. London, 1929.Google Scholar
Champion, Pierre. Histoirepoetiquedu quinziemeslide. 2 vols. Paris, 1923.Google Scholar
Chastellain, Georges. Oeuvres. Edited by de Lettenhove, Kervyn. 8 vols. Brussels, 1863-86.Google Scholar
Chatelet, Albert. Early Dutch Painting. New York, 1981.Google Scholar
Chiffoleau, Jacques. “Sur l'usage obsessionnelde la messe pour les morts a la fin dumoyen age.” In Faire croire , 235-56. Rome, 1981.Google Scholar
De Coo, Jozef. “A Medieval Look at the Meiode Annunciation.” Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte 44 (1981): 114-33.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin. National Gallery Catalogues:Early Netherlandish School. 3ded. London, 1968.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin. The National Gallery. Vol. 2. (Lesprimitifs flamands, Corpus de la peinture,no. 3, pt. 2). London, 1954.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Women ojn Top.“In idem, Society and Culture in Early Modern France , 124-51. Stanford, 1975.Google Scholar
Dhanens, Elisabeth. Hubert and Jan van Eyck. New York, 1981.Google Scholar
Diccionaria de la Lengua Castellana, … compuestopor la Real Academia Espanola. Madrid, 1732.Google Scholar
Donahue, Charles, Jr. “The Canon Law onthe Formation of Marriage and Social Practice in the later Middle Ages. “Journalof Family History 8 (1983): 144-58.Google Scholar
Doutrepont, Georges. La littérapture française àla cour des dues de Bourgogne. Paris, 1909.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. The History of Manners. New York, 1978.Google Scholar
Faggin, Giorgio T. L'opera complete dei van Eyck. Milan, 1968.Google Scholar
Fiero, Gloria. “Courtier and Commoner: Two Styles of Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Illumination.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 2 (1975): 15–34.Google Scholar
Freeman, Margaret B. The Unicorn Tapestries. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Gili y Gaya, Samuel. Tesoro Lexicografico(1492-1726). Vol. 1. Madrid, 1960.Google Scholar
Gombrich, E. H. The Story of Art. London, 1962.Google Scholar
Gotdieb, Beatrice. “The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage. “In Family and Sexualityin French History , ed. Wheaton, R. and Hareven, T. K., 48–83. Philadelphia, 1980.Google Scholar
Grauls, Jan. “Ter Verklaring van Bosch en Bruegel.” Gentsche Bijdragen tot de Kunst geschiedenis 6 (1939-40): 139-60.Google Scholar
Grauls, Jan. Volkstaal en volksleven in het werk van Pieter Bruegel. Antwerp and Amsterdam, 1957.Google Scholar
Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens. Edited by Hans Bächtold-Stäubli. 10 vols. Berlin and Leipzig, 1927-42.Google Scholar
Harthan, John. The Book of Hours. New York, 1977.Google Scholar
Held, Julius S. “Arris Pictorias Amator, An Antwerp Art Collector and His Collection.“ Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 50 (1957): 74-83. (Rev. ed. idem, Rubens andhis Circle , 43–50, 56. Princeton, 1982.)Google Scholar
Hindman, Sandra. “The Iconography of Queen Isabeau de Baviere (1410-1415): An Essay in Method.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 102 (1983): 102-10.Google Scholar
Hughes, Diane Owen. “Representing the Family: Portraits and Purposes in Early Modern Italy. “Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (1986): 7–38.Google Scholar
Huizinga, Johan. “La physionomie morale de Philippe le Bon.” Annates de Bourgogne 4 (1932): 101-29.Google Scholar
Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. New York, 1954.Google Scholar
Husband, Timothy, and Jane Hayward. The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages. New York, 1975.Google Scholar
Jeay, Madeleine. “Sexuality and Family in Fifteenth-Century France: Are Literary Sources a Mask or a Mirror?” Journal of Family History 4 (1979): 328-45.Google Scholar
Jongh, E. de. “Erotica in vogelperspectief. De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks 17de eeuwse genrevorstellingen.” Simiolus 3 (1968-69): 22–74.Google Scholar
Jongh, E. de. “Pearls of Virtue and Pearls of Vice.“ Simiolus 8 (1975-76): 69–97.Google Scholar
Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Love and Marriage inthe Age of Chaucer. Ithaca, NY, 1975.Google Scholar
Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana, 1956.Google Scholar
Kepiriski, Zdzislaw. “Jan van Eyck: 'Malseristwo Arnolfinich; czy ‘Dawid i Betsabe.’ “ Rocznik historii sztuki 10(1974): 119-64.Google Scholar
Kren, Thomas, ed. Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts: Treasures from the British Library. New York, 1983.Google Scholar
Leach, Maria. God Had a Dog. New Brunswick, NJ, 1961.Google Scholar
Lejeune, Jean. “La pÉriode liégeoise des van Eyck.” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 17 (1955): 62–78.Google Scholar
Le Librairie de Philippe le Bon. Brussels, 1967.Google Scholar
Le siècle d'or de la miniature fiamande. Lemicenat de Philippe le Bon. Brussels, 1959.Google Scholar
LOpelmann, Martin. Die Liederhandschrijfdes Cardinals de Rohan (XV.Jahrhundert). Göttingen, 1923.Google Scholar
Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman. Cambridge, Eng., 1980.Google Scholar
Martin, H., and Laner, Ph.. Les principauxmanuscrits à peintures de la Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal à Paris. Paris, 1929.Google Scholar
Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master. London, 1968.Google Scholar
Mills, John. Carpets in Pictures. London, n.d.Google Scholar
Mirot, Leon. “Les Cenames (Études Lucquoises,4).” Bibliothèque de I'Fxole des Chartes 91 (1930): 100-68.Google Scholar
Mills, John. “Un Mercante di Lucca in Fiandra— Giovanni Arnolfini.” Bolletino storico luc chese 12 (1940): 81–105.Google Scholar
Mullally, Robert. “The So-Called Hawking Party at the Court of Philip the Good: A Study of a Burgundian Primitive of 1431. ” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 90 (1977): 109-12.Google Scholar
Nash, John M. The Age of Rembrandt and Ver meer. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Neff, Theodore Lee. La satire desfemmes danslapoesiefrancaise du moyen age. Paris, 1900.Google Scholar
Olson, Glending. Literature as Recreation inthe Later Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY, 1982.Google Scholar
Origo, Iris. The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini. New York, 1957.Google Scholar
Ozment, Steven. When Fathers Ruled. Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA, 1983.Google Scholar
Pächt, Otto. “Rene’ d'Anjou-Studien, II.“ Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungenin Wien 73 (1977): 7–106.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting:Its Origins and Character. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1953.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. “Jan van Eyck's Amolfini Portrait.“ Burlington Magazine 64 (1934): 117-27.Google Scholar
Payne, Blanche. History of Costume. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Robertson, Martin. Letter to the Editor. Burlington Magazine 65 (1934): 297.Google Scholar
Roover, Raymond de. Money, Banking and Credit in Medieval Bruges. Cambridge, MA, 1948.Google Scholar
Roper, Lyndal. “ ‘Going to Church and Street': Weddings in Reformation Augsburg.“ Past and Present 106 (1985): 62–101.Google Scholar
Rosenau, Helen. “Some English Influenceson Jan van Eyck.” Apollo 36 (1942): 125-28.Google Scholar
Rossi, William A. The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe. New York, 1976.Google Scholar
Rowland, Beryl. Animals with Human Faces. Knoxville, 1973.Google Scholar
Sachs, Hannelore. The Renaissance Woman. New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Sandler, Lucy Freeman. “The Handclasp inthe Amolfini Wedding: A Manuscript Precedent.“ Art Bulletin 66 (1984): 488-91.Google Scholar
Sandler, Lucy Freeman. Letter to the Editor. Art Bulletin 68(1986): 326.Google Scholar
Schabacker, Peter. “De Matrimonioad Morganaticum Contracto: Jan van Eyck's 'Amolfini’ Portrait Reconsidered.” Art Quarterly 35 (1972): 375-98.Google Scholar
Schiltz, E. Van Eyck-Studien. Antwerp, 1958.Google Scholar
Schodt, Alphonse de. Confririe de Notre-Dame de I'Arbre Sec. Bruges, 1877.Google Scholar
Scott, Margaret. Late Gothic Europe, 1400-1500. London, 1980.Google Scholar
Snyder, James. “Jan van Eyck and Adam's Apple.” Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 511 —15.Google Scholar
Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art. New York,1985.Google Scholar
Strubbe, E. I. “Een Episode uit het leven van Giovanni Amolfini.” Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, Sociiti d‘(-mulation 89 (1952): 67–81.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Franklin P., ed. Les cents nouvellesnouvelles. Geneva, 1966.Google Scholar
Tolkowsky, S. Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits. London, 1938.Google Scholar
Tot leringen vermaak. Amsterdam, 1976.Google Scholar
Toussaert, Jacques. Le sentiment religieux en Flandre a la fin du moyen age. Paris, 1963.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Richard. Philip the Good. London, 1970.Google Scholar
Viardot, Louis. Les musfes d'Angleterre, de Belgique, de Hollande et de Russie. Paris, 1852.Google Scholar
Weale, W. H. J. “Inventaire des chartes etdocuments appartenant aux Archives de la Corporation de Saint Luc et Saint Eloi a Bruges.” Le Beffroi 1 (1863): 201-22.,Google Scholar
Saint Eloi a Bruges, and Brockwell, M.. The van Eycks andtheir Art. London, 1912.Google Scholar
Westermarck, Edward. The History of Human Marriage. 3 vols. London, 1921.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Eithne. The Rose-Garden Game. London, 1969.Google Scholar
Winkler, Friedrich. Die flämische Buchmalereides xv. und xvi. Jahrhunderts. 2d ed. Amsterdam, 1978.Google Scholar
Wright, Lawrence. Warm and Snug: The Historyof the Bed. London, 1962.Google Scholar