In today’s class, we continued to shift our focus to fifteenth century art in northern Europe. We were introduced to the artistic design of “disguised symbolism,” which was a technique used at the time during the best artists. It was a way of disguising the meaning of symbols within artist’s paintings. The viewer would be able to spot these hidden symbols if they understood the culture of the area. We learned that the greatest artist of this era was Jan van Eyck. He was loved so much that he was even associated with the Duke of Burgundy. He was paid for being at the court of the Duke regularly and the Duke gave him “secret travels” which consisted of ambassador work and most likely “spy work” as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We discussed one of van Eyck’s masterpieces, “The Arnolfini Portrait” which he created in 1434. The painting depicts Arnolfini, a wealthy Italian merchant and businessman, with an unknown woman, who is speculated to be his future wife. The painting dhows Arnolfini and this woman holding hands and Arnolfini is taking an oath at the same time. This tells us that it is a marriage scene. There is a “disguised symbol” within the scene as well. There are two pairs of shoes not put aware in the house which shows that the two people are not wearing shoes, and are standing on holy ground, emphasizing the sacred moment taking place. There is also a dog in the painting which symbolizes faithfulness and loyalty. The peaches in the background represent fertility, as once you get married you hope to have children some day. There is also a sculpture of Saint Margaret praying in the background. This is the saint you pray to for giving birth safely, so it makes sense as to why it is in this marriage scene. There is also a mirror at the back of the room which allows us to see there are two other people in the room which is necessary for a marriage to take place. Two witnesses are needed, and a priest was not required at the time. To conclude, today’s class outlined the brilliance of Jan van Eyck’s artwork during fifteenth century northern European culture. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In today’s class, we continued to shift our focus to fifteenth century art in northern Europe. We were introduced to the artistic design of “disguised symbolism,” which was a technique used at the time during the best artists. It was a way of disguising the meaning of symbols within artist’s paintings. The viewer would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1680,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions\/1680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}