During Wednesday’s class, we began by continuing our discussion of 15th century art in Northern Europe. We first looked at Sluter’s Wall of Moses which depicts six life-sized prophets. The figures were originally painted which we learned is known as polychromy. The color, lifesize scale, and realistic rendering of the figures are representative of artists’ desire to make art look as life-like as possible.
Next, we discussed “The Arnolfini Portrait” by Jan van Eyck. Although there are some religious themes, the work is secular. As artists show an increasing desire to achieve naturalism in their work, we learned how artists such as van Eyck used disguised symbolism as a system of conveying meaning. van Eyck incorporates many details that can be interpreted as disguised symbolism. For example, the figures in the portrait are not wearing their shoes, and two pairs of shoes are visible on the floor to emphasize this. We learned that the removals of shoes can indicate holy ground and in this case, the figures have removed their shoes to show they are aware of the holiness of the ritual they are participating in. I thought the imagery used to demonstrate the public and private spheres and the different roles that men and women were expected to assume at that time was especially interesting. We also discussed van Eyck’s “Man in a Red Turban.” The image is likely a self portrait, as the figure is looking directly at the viewers, or how van Eyck would have seen himself while he was painting from his own image in a mirror. We also noted how, should this be a self portrait, van Eyck is wearing a red scarf around his head. In “The Arnolfini Portrait,” one of the figures in the mirror is seen wearing a red turban, indicating that van Eyck may have placed himself in the scene. He also signed “The Arnolfini Portrait” to say ‘Jan van Eyck was here’ which supports the theory that he painted himself into the scene and/or witnessed the scene himself.