Love letter to a painting | TLS
7/16/12 8:04 PM
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Love letter to a painting
Theodore K. Rabb
Carola Hicks
GIRL IN A GREEN GOWN
The history and mystery of the
Arnolfini portrait
257pp. Chatto and Windus. £16.99.
978 0 701 18337 0
Published: 26 October 2011
T his book is a love letter to a painting. Like many love letters, it has a
melancholy air – in this case because it was written just before the
author died, and had to be completed and seen through the press by
her husband. But the strength of the passion for one of Britain’s
favourite works of art is unmistakable, especially when this academic
art historian scolds her colleagues for “untangling its meaning, rather
than just enjoying it”. Inevitably, in the course of more than 200
pages, Carola Hicks invests what she calls “the Arnolfini portrait” with
a great deal of meaning, and explains at some length what Jan Van
Eyck was trying to do when he painted it. Even as she dismisses
alternative interpretations, however, she keeps reminding us of the
exquisite mastery and the profound influence exhibited by this little
wooden panel, measuring less than 2 feet by 3.
There are two main themes that Hicks pursues. Going much further
than predecessors such as Craig Harbison (in Jan Van Eyck: The play
of realism, 1991), she delves into the material world that is reflected in
the many objects in the painting. If you want to know what the
“dagging” of a fabric requires, how “crown glass” is made, or what was
involved when the huchiers made a banc à perche, this is the book for
you. There is an affectionate recreation of the crafts and the rare and
fine goods that were available to a couple as rich as the Arnolfini, established as they were at the upper levels of the social
hierarchy. To make these descriptions as concrete as she can, Hicks situates them firmly in context, explaining what was
available in Bruges, the city where the picture was produced. Thus we discover the source of the fur that lines the woman’s
underdress (pured minever or lettice from local squirrels) and the quite different fur (pine marten from Russia or
Scandinavia) that is visible around the man’s gown. The portrait becomes a cornucopia of earthly delights – costly stuffs
and sumptuous things, brought from far and near.
The second major theme is provenance. As Hicks points out, one of the remarkable features of the panel is its pedigree, for
we have a good idea of who owned it, and where it was, from the day it was finished in 1434 down to our own times. Its
history is not without adventure, and certainly hazardous moments, as it travelled over land and sea, escaped burning, and
even survived a battle and disposition by soldiers after the fighting ended. Hicks recounts this history with aplomb,
together with sketches of the owners and tales of the negotiations as the painting changed hands.
The one owner who gets less than his due is Philip II of Spain, whose interests are described in terms merely of his piety
and his Habsburg inheritance. But the nudes the King commissioned from Titian, and the many other examples of his
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Love letter to a painting | TLS
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tastes, mark him as probably the most discriminating connoisseur to have owned the Van Eyck. The Spanish devotion to
Netherlandish art, moreover, long pre-dated any political or dynastic interest. Queen Isabella’s father, John II, was already
a collector, as were other patrons who sought goods from the north at the Medina del Campo fairs. There are over a
thousand Flemish pictures in the Prado, and many examples of Hispano-Flemish architecture from the fifteenth century.
Those connections alone should have precluded this verdict on Spaniards in a sentence about Hieronymus Bosch: “The
artist’s combination of grotesquerie with medieval Christian symbolism, his way of blending sensuality with pain, and the
surreal conjunction of fantastic and microscopically accurate landscape epitomized the distinctive Spanish character and
the fanatic power of Spanish religion”.
The two themes provide the backbone of the book, and generate a lively narrative that brings one from fifteenth-century
Flanders to the present day. The only difficulty is that Hicks decided to interweave the two together. Thus a chapter on the
painting’s furniture comes between chapters on two successive owners, Marguerite of Austria and Marie of Hungary. And
the jumping back and forth continues to the end of the nineteenth century. A chapter entitled “The Dog” divides even the
period after 1842, when the Van Eyck found the home it has kept ever since, London’s National Gallery. The effect is to
interrupt the flow, to cause threads to be lost, and to blur the overall narrative as attention switches from one kind of
analysis to another.
It is only in the last two chapters that Hicks takes up the question of what the painting is about. Her emphasis on the
material goods in the Arnolfini room makes clear her own focus: that this is a celebration of the wealth and possessions of
a prominent merchant. As for other interpretations, she suggests that the spate of scholarly quests for symbolic or other
meanings has led to “many misunderstandings”, and she pays them little notice beyond indicating some of their
shortcomings. It is fair enough to argue that a superb experience is in store for anyone who stands in front of the panel and
revels in its mastery of colour, of light, and of detail. Yet an overall assessment of the artist’s aims, beyond the depiction of
everyday objects, would surely have enhanced the pleasure of the general reader for whom this book is written.
That is not to say that Hicks herself eschews the wider references the painting implies. She explains the presence of the
oranges, for instance, by citing the contemporary theory that they were “Adam’s apples”, and possibly the fruit on the tree
of knowledge in the garden of Eden. Repeatedly, too, she notes the analogies in the picture to the attributes of the Virgin
Mary, one of Van Eyck’s favourite subjects. But she firmly resists the notion, first put forward in the 1930s, in a famous
article by Erwin Panofsky, that there might be an underlying theme that animates the array of unusual details in the panel.
For Panofsky it was the sacrament of marriage, evidenced by a multitude of objects, from the figure of St Margaret, patron
saint of childbirth, carved on the bedpost, to the couple’s hand-holding and the single lit candle (a feature of the marriage
ceremony) in the candelabrum. Though some of the connections were challenged, the two pages Panofsky devoted to the
painting twenty years later, in his Early Netherlandish Painting (1953), still manage to give Van Eyck a purpose that
elevates the immediate celebration of a rich man and his possessions.
Hicks hesitates to offer any such broad understanding. Yet one has to wonder whether her insistence that a bed was a
feature of presentation rooms (which is how she describes the Arnolfini chamber) might not be tempered by a recognition
that its appearance was a feature of scenes in presentation rooms that celebrated a marriage. Along similar lines, she
describes Arnolfini’s raised hand as a greeting to the two visitors reflected in the concave mirror, even though his palm is
directed at his wife, which is far more likely to mean that the gesture is directed as a salutation or blessing to her
(emphasizing the connection between them) rather than to the visitors. And Hicks seems deliberately to avoid mentioning
the symbolisms that were common in the art of the day: the dog as a token of fidelity, or the discarded shoes that marked a
holy place (echoing God’s command to Moses at the burning bush).
Although arguments over specific references – such as whether the woman is pregnant – may never be resolved, there
seems little doubt that this is a painting about a sanctified relationship, and not simply a portrait of a couple. That
perception not only aids understanding, but also enriches the enjoyment of Van Eyck’s achievement. How vivid it all
seems, and yet how powerful is the basic message about the sacrament of marriage.
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Love letter to a painting | TLS
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Hicks abjures this approach to the painting, focusing instead, in her concluding pages, on the impact it has had on the arts
since going on public display in 1842. This is a masterly account, ranging from the Pre-Raphaelites to Tracey Emin, and
encompassing advertising, cartoons and souvenirs as well as more serious endeavours. It is here, however, that one
becomes aware of how poorly Hicks has been served by the book’s illustrations. In the early chapters, they are small, dark,
and largely unhelpful. It is almost impossible, for instance, to read the inscription in the portrait of Marie of Hungary. A
section of colour reproductions is better, but still too small to help with details. Because the text lacks cross-references, one
is disappointed when, stirred by a vivid description of a homage to Van Eyck by David Hockney in his “Mr and Mrs Clark
and Percy”, one turns to the colour illustrations for illumination, only to find a painting by Benjamin Sullivan that is
deemed beguiling but is otherwise not explored.
The shortcomings of the illustrations are especially regrettable in that they could have done much to help Hicks make her
points. Again and again, the arguments would have been easier to follow if there had been sizeable reproductions of the
details in the painting, let alone of other Van Eycks that bear on her subject – the Berlin portrait of Arnolfini, the various
portrayals of the Virgin (notably with Chancellor Rolin), and details from the Ghent altarpiece, all of which figure in the
analysis. Even without such assistance, however, this beautifully written book is a splendid testament to the intelligence,
attention to detail, depth of research, and down-to-earth vision of a first-rate scholar.
Theodore K. Rabb is Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University. His new book, The Artist and the Warrior,
is due to be published next month.
find out more by following this link.
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