Jan van Eyck’s double portrait in the National Gallery London, signed and dated 1434, is certainly the most famous of all early Netherlandish paintings and has its firm place in popular imagination of the Late Middle Ages. Known as the “Arnolfini Portrait” or even the “Arnolfini Wedding”, it is generally believed to present a member of the Luccese merchant family of that name, and his wife. This identification rests on two entries in inventories Margaret of Austria, a former owner of the picture, from 1516 and 1523/24 respectively, where the panel is described as showing “hernoul le fin” or “arnoult fin” – assumed to be slightly corrupted versions of the name Arnolfini. This assumption has only rarely, and unsuccessfully, been challenged. It further entailed an enormous amount of publication on the work and its supposed sitters, which more often than not led to sophisticated elaborations on the painter, the work, and Netherlandish painting in general.
However, despite all those efforts and scholarly achievements, the identification of the couple represented still rests solely on the interpretation of the two inventories mentioned – nothing that would corroborate has been found yet. On the other hand, an investigation of the context of the entries in question, which seems to be crucial for the understanding of the texts, is still wanting. In this talk, Dr Stephan Kemperdick will try to investigate both the textual as well as the material context in which the famous painting appears when it was in Margaret of Austria’s possession.
Dr Stephan Kemperdick is Curator of Early Netherlandish and Early German Painting at the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In 1992 he embarked on a PhD dissertation on Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flémalle. It was submitted to the Freie Universität in 1996, and published as a book a year later. He has been an assistant curator at Städel Museum in Frankfurt, and was curator of Old Masters at Kunstmuseum Basel. He has been at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin since 2008 and has curated the exhibitons The Road to Van Eyck in Rotterdam, 2012, The Ghent Altarpiece in Berlin 1820–1920 in 2014, Late Gothic. The Birth of Modernity in 2021 and, most recently, Hugo van der Goes in 2023
Organised by Professor Susie Nash (The Courtauld).
This Northern Renaissance event is kindly supported by Sam Fogg.
