Of all Jan van Eyck’s small one-person portraits only the one of his 33-year-old wife Margaret is identified with full certainty, and this only thanks to the artist’s own inscription. Since W H J Weale found some dates about Jan de Leeuw, a goldsmith in Bruges, there has been nearly consensus that it ought to be this man we see in the portrait of a 35-year-old man in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, a painting that around the frame has a text telling us among other things, that the portrayed man is Jan de (image of a lion). But if it is an engagement ring this man has in his hand, which seems likely, he cannot be the goldsmith in Bruges, who was already married and a father in 1436 when the portrait is dated.

Suggestions to identify the persons on the artist’s other few known portraits have also often been generally accepted, but always leaving more or less severe doubts. And not all of the portraits in Van Eyck’s style are well preserved, which in a few cases has contributed to continuing discussions about the author.

Among the problematic works there is a portrait of a man with a red turban in Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, which is interpreted to have been painted by Jan van Eyck around 1440 and show a Giovanni Arnolfini or possibly this man’s brother Michele. This unsigned portrait has a somewhat different and weaker quality than Jan’s undisputed works. It shows in detailed characteristics the same man as we can see in the 1434 dated so-called Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini in National Gallery, London, but the man seems to be at least 15 years older. To ascribe this portrait to Jan van Eyck and date it around 1440 - pressed within the artist’s lifetime - one has to suppress the fact, that this about 40-year-old man must have been portrayed as late as about 1450 and thus definitely by another qualified artist than Jan.

In spite of intensive research the theory that the man on the remarkable and in nearly all histories of art reproduced double portrait in National Gallery in London should be a member of the Italian and also in Bruges working merchant family Arnolfini has no other verification than the imaginative interpretation of some words in the inventories from 1516 (Hernoul le fin) and 1523/24 (Arnould fin) of the collections belonging to Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands 1507-15, governor 1518-30. Although it in those days was nearly impossible to refer to a person without mentioning his Christian name, the idea that Hernoul and Arnoult should refer to one of the Arnolfini brothers Giovanni or Michele has only occasionally been questioned. Nor does what we know about the Arnolfinis in Bruges - a good deal - support the theory. On the contrary.

The medieval symbolism of which this double portrait is full has been convincingly interpreted over the years, sometimes differently. But so far it is still an unsolved mystery what it was that engaged the artist to the extent that he painted one of the world’s incomparable masterpieces, and created what may be called the first realistic full-length portraits of two persons acting in a ceremony. Although there has been written more about this painting than about most famous masterpieces we are left with a feeling that there is still something hidden in this ceremonial scene, something essential that a contemporary viewer probably would have understood.

The artist’s unmistakeable signature Johannes de eyck fuit hic. 1434, meaning ´… was here 1434´, is painted in a legal way at a central place in the picture and in such big letters that the meaning must have been, that the text should be easily read from some distance. Two ´witnesses´ who the artist very inventively has placed dimly seen in a mirror in the middle of the painting tell us, that the ceremony is a legal one. This supports the idea that the painting is intended as some kind of public document. As one of these onlookers reasonably must be the painter himself, scholars have come to the conclusion that his presence was of special importance for the ceremony, and that perhaps one of the two persons in the double portrait was related to him. This suggestion does not fit the princely appearing man in mink-edged purple mantle very well. It better fits for the also elegantly dressed lady, as her headdress with only five fringes instead of seven for a contemporary viewer indicates that she is of a lower rank.

It has been suggested with good reasons that what we see should not be a conventional marriage but a morganatic ceremony meaning that the woman and her children should have no right to inherit part of the man’s heritage or position, circumstances not very likely for any member of the Arnolfini family but for e g a prince marrying a lady of lower rank. The self-confident but rather tender-looking young man in his mid-twenties has an intelligent and somewhat ironic or nonchalant glimpse in his eyes, perhaps indicating that the artist suspects that he is not quite serious. The a little younger, good-looking and sensitive lady, however, turns herself against the man in confidence and subserviency. It looks like a relationship of love between a highborn man and a lady from a lower ranked family, who he so decidedly wants to live with that he - as research has found likely - demonstrates his humility by the symbolic gesture of taking off his belt and his wooden pattens.

The subtlety by which the couple is characterized shows that the artist knew both very well. Knowing that Jan van Eyck possibly was of noble but not high-ranked birth it is a reasonable guess that the lady may be one of his sisters, for whom he - in the absence of the father - acted as guardian. One might even guess that this - as is looks - well-educated German lady (una alemana) could be his sister Margaret yet this sister’s existence sometimes is doubted, because she is not found mentioned in any preserved contemporary document. Lucas d’Heere, however, writes in 1559 that Margaret should have been an assistant to Jan’s brother Hubert van Eyck and had been buried beside Hubert. A few years later, in 1568, M van Vaernewyck mentions her as a skilled painter. It is also possible to find clear supports among the painting’s symbolic elements for the theory that the lady’s name might be Margaret, e g the necklace with perls.

If we on the other hand look for a high-ranked man in the entourage of Jan van Eyck and his employer, Philip the Good, there is in fact one prince who with great probability may be identified with the man that Jan van Eyck has portrayed so extraordingly: Arnold, Duke of Guelders, whose name in the local dialect could be written in many ways, e g Arnoud, Aarnout or Arnald. This prince in the nearest neighbourhood of Philip the Good was born in 1410 and thus at the right age of the man portrayed in 1434. And by many people he must have been remembered as le fin, because he was the last independent ruler over one of the oldest and most prosperous duchies of Europe. When the entries in the inventories of Margaret of Austria were written, Guelders was since long lost to Burgundy and then inherited by Austria, events of highest historic importance in the late Middle Ages. Members of the ruling establishment and their book-keepers can in the middle of the sixteenth centrury hardly have forgotten which prince it was, that was bearer of the longlived shame of having been Arnold ´le fin´. Nor was it necessary to mention the name of his lost duchy.

It was in 1423 when Reinald IV, Duke of Guelders and Jülich, died childless that the 13-year-old Arnold van Egmond - as planned by Reinald - was appointed to take over in Guelders, with his father Jan of Egmond as administrator until the boy reached mature age. In Jülich, however, Adolph, Duke of Berg, who considered himself nearer to inherit after Reinald, forced himself to power, a reason to long future contrarity. Already the same year the children’s guardians arranged, that Arnold was betrothed to the 7-year-old Catherine, a daughter of Adolph of Cleves in the bordering duchy, a usual way to plan for a future union and to stay allied against threatening neighbours. There is reason to believe that this betrothal was in concord with Adolph’s brother-in-law, the powerful Philip of Burgundy, who was aiming at a future kingdom between France and the Holy Roman German Empire and already had Cleves as near connected as a kind of satellite.

At the beginning of 1430 the wedding was celebrated but not until a year later was the 14-year-old bride brought to her bridegroom. We can see her portrait in the so-called Hours of Catherine of Cleves, now preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the most magnificent book that was illuminated in the northern Low Countries at this time, with very original miniatures by a still unidentified master. She is also portrayed together with her consort Arnold in the Plaidoirie d’amours in Versailles, which probably is a copy of a painting by Jan van Eyck (See the article Duchesses of Cleves and Books of Hours). The couple’s first child, Maria, later on married to King James II of Scotland, was born in 1432 or in January 1433. When the double portrait was painted in 1434 there was not yet a male heir, as their first son Wilhelm, born the same year, did not survive long. There was perhaps already now a crisis in this for political reasons in their children years arranged marriage. Catherine, who from the portraits to judge hardly may be considered a beauty, lived in fact a great part of her life in Lobith apart from her consort. As early as in 1434 she acted on her own when selling two houses she had inherited, maybe indicating that a separation was discussed already at this time.

Among rulers of the time the habit of holding mistresses without much formalities was common. E g Philip the Good had probably more than a dozen, some of them at the same time, living at different places he used to visit; they are normally mentioned discreetly without names in the accounts. Some of the many bastards, occasionally legitimized, were raised at the court and the duke arranged good positions for them later in life. Arnold of Guelders, however, if it is him we see in the double portrait, may with his known religiosity have had another attitude to women and marriage. If so, the betrothal ceremony may have taken place while trying to get exemtion from the pope to divorce himself from his, as history shows, hardhearted wife Catherine, intending to live instead with a woman he loved.

As a son in a marriage with a lady of low rank never would have been accepted to inherit the duchy, Arnold may in 1434 have been inclined to resign. Next in turn to take over in Guelders would then have been his two-year-younger brother Wilhelm van Egmond, like Arnold intelligent and well-educated. Already at the betrothal between Arnold and Catherine in 1423, their parents had made a detailed agreement in order to secure a future near connection between the two duchies, telling among else that if Catherine should die before the marriage, Arnold should instead marry the one of her unmarried sisters who was nearest in age. And if Arnold should die, his brother Wilhelm should marry Catherine, or if also Catherine had died, one of her sisters.

After unsuccessful wars and perhaps incompetent decisions Arnold was about 1433/34 severely in debt, which may have pressed him to consider a retirement in favour of his brother Wilhelm, who had been raised at the court of Cleves and is known to have been on good terms with Philip the Good. The summer 1434, when the double portrait seems to have been painted, Wilhelm of Egmond was at the mature age of 22 years still unmarried, maybe as a consequence of the heritage agreements between Cleves and Guelders. Elisabeth of Cleves, however, the eldest of Catherine’s four younger sisters, was this year at an age of only 13 years married to the 15-year-old Count Heinrich of Schaumburg-Blankenburg, an event which is recorded to have taken place on 15 July but perhaps was on 15 August when Philip the Good arrived at Talent in southern Burgundy, where the bride’s mother Marie of Burgundy and a demoiselle de Clèves are mentioned at the court in company of Duchess Isabella of Burgundy since the end of June and to at least the beginning of August.

The wish of the nobility and the powerful cities of Guelders was, that the duchy should be ruled by a member of the Egmond family. In case Arnold died or married in a morganatic way his probably more competent brother Wilhelm would become the next ruler. The painting of the exceptionally well-planned double portrait, meant to be shown in public, may have been arranged in order to press Arnold to fulfil the morganatic betrothal with a marriage. And Philip the Good’s painter servant Jan van Eyck had of course very good reasons to favour with all his talent what might become a honorable arrangement, if the portrayed lady is a sister of his. The ever intriguing Philip is known to have spent most of the spring and summer of 1434 in Bruges, Bruxelles and other places in the neighbourhood.

If Arnold in 1434 really had a sincere intention to resign from the Duchy of Guelders for a life in a morganatic marriage, he did, however, change his mind, as his legal wife Catherine was to get three more children, among them Adolph, a male heir born in 1438. Later on the double portrait would have lost all legal interest and may have hung as an exceptional piece of art in the room we see in the painting, probably in Jan van Eyck’s house in Bruges, maybe even at the place where the mirror is to be seen in the painting, commemorating a love affair between two somewhat unequal contrahents, of whom the man may have been either not quite serious or a victim of political circumstances.

Of the two persons visible in the mirror the most prominent, who is exquisitely dressed in blue, may be Philip the Good, as it is likely that the artist was placed to the left of his employer at the ceremony. Velazques, who probably was well informed about the painting, seems at least to have taken the presence of Philip for granted when he painted his famous Las Meninas inspired by Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece, then since long hanging in the royal Palace in Madrid, because here it is the king himself we see in a mirror together with his queen.

One of the most beautiful and striking parts of Jan van Eyck’s painting is the chandelier. It is therefore astonishing that up to now only the single burning light on it has received attention as a symbolic element. This extremely rich and originally constructed chandelier may have existed in reality, and if so maybe even have been designed by the artist. It is also possible that it first appeared in this painting and that all later simplified construction, visible in paintings by Petrus Christus, Dieric Bouts, Rogier van der Weyden and others, including a few preserved real chandeliers (e g one in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), are inspired from Van Eyck’s version.

To my knowledge no other painting from Jan van Eyck’s time or earlier, not even any of a great many interiors painted in illuminated books, shows a chandelier like the one in Van Eyck’s double portrait. It is therefore likely that this complex construction is bearer of a further symbolic meaning than that of the single burning candle. The ceremony cannot show a marriage, as the lady does not wear a crown. Resembling a magnificent crown - in Van Eyck’s own German language Lichtkrone - the chandelier may, however, have been included primarily as a very inventive symbol of the coming marriage. The same may be meant by the ring in a lion’s mouth pendent from the end of the chandelier, just above the artist’s signature. The chandeliers of this type which can be seen in some later paintings hanging from the ceilings have also such a ring, but then always with a function; to enable movements up and down there is a device with ropes. Jan van Eyck’s chandelier, however, has got no such device, so the ring has no real function here.

According to M van Vaernewyck the painter Margaret van Eyck should had lived all her life as a virgin. As she is referred to as a renowned artist, there are reasons to remember her not only as an assistant but also as a possible contributor in some way to e g the so-called Hours of Catherine of Cleves, which is unusually rich of domestic scenes and motifs with women. It is well documented that this expensive book project, in full work at this time, reveals strong stylistic influences from paintings by both Jan van Eyck and the artist who earliest was called the Master of Flémalle but later mostly has been identified with Robert Campin. As I try to show in the article Hubert van Eyck, Robert Campin and the Ghent Altarpiece. Misunderstandings and Falsifications, Campin may in reality be Margaret’s brother Hubert van Eyck, in whos atelier she is said to have assisted.

Early descriptions tell us that the double portrait originally had two shutters on which some lines from Ovid explained dat geschildert was/een trauwinghe van eenen man ende vrouwe/die van fides ghetrouwt worden (M van Vaernewyck, a man who may have had the possibility to read the verses). This seems to confirm the theory that the painting is not of a marriage, not even of a morganatic one, but of a man and a woman who are betrothed to each other ´by Faith´ in a morganatic way and are planning a marriage later on. The three golden fruits on the chest of drawers seem to refer to the Trinity and Arnold’s well-known religiosity, as the fruits on Van Eyck’s Lucca Virgin (Frankfurt am Main) are only two; the child has got the third one in his left hand. Understood in this way the clear separation of the apple from the three holy fruits may also symbolize, that a possible child in a morganatic marriage would not have the right to inherit the duchy. The glimpse of paradisiac cherries through the window points for a dating of the painting to July; perhaps the betrothal was celebrated on the day of St Margaret July 13.

As a ruler over Guelders Arnold was not inclined to follow in the footsteps of either Philip the Good or his father-in-law Adolph of Cleves, with whom he started to quarrel at an early stage. He was intelligent and well-educated enough to be one of the princes of his time who could read Ovid and Seneca in the original, an intellectual who does not seem to have been unscrupulous enough to be a successful medieval administrator; he is even referred to as one as religious as a Carthusian monk. If it is him we see in Van Eyck’s painting, he must have been a rather weak person who hardly can have been a hero at wars or tournaments, where many princes got their reputation. It is therefore not astonishing to find in Monstrelet’s Chronique, that Arnold is not mentioned among the other highest-ranked, who at the peace conference at Arras in 1435 played tennis (paume) with Philip the Good. His most princely quality may have been a partiality for spenderous living, which in the long run together with repeated unsuccessful wars ruined the duchy. At last he was in 1465 treacherously confined to hard prison for seven years by his rude son Adolph, by the consent of Catherine. Charles the Bold, the new ruler of Burgundy, saved him and shortly before Arnold’s death ´bought´ the duchy from him.

The pope had proclaimed 1450 as a Holy year with the result that exceptionally many people went on pilgrimage to Rome, among them also Arnold. Delayed by problems in his duchy he did not start until early in 1451, and like many other pilgrims he prolonged his journey as far as to Jerusalem, accompanied by among others Heinrich of Schwarzburg-Blankenburg, married to Catherine’s younger sister Elisabeth. He was back in Guelders in February 1452. It is in connection with this pilgrimage we might see the portrait of the middleaged man in Berlin, who is demonstratingly holding a folded document in his hand, traditionally interpreted as a reference to a foundation made in gratitude for safe return from a journey. As also technical pecularities indicate that this portrait may not have been painted by Jan van Eyck, deceased as early as in 1441, we have to look for another possible artist among the few qualified enough to be mistaken for Jan van Eyck.

According to a nearly contemporary comment by B Faci the artist Rogier van der Weyden was one of the many who visited Rome during the Holy year. It has been suggested that he on one of his passings through the south of France may have executed and probably completed before 1451 the both in Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune still preserved portraits of Nicolas Rolin and wife. Van der Weyden knew of course Duke Arnold very well and may have portrayed him already in Burgundy. It is also a possibility that he met Duke Arnold in Italy at some occasion, maybe in Rome, maybe in Venice, a place that also Van der Weyden may have visited although no known document mentions it, and that he then painted the in Berlin preserved uncompromisingly direct study of the worn and sunburnt man that we have strong reasons to believe is Duke Arnold.

Identifying the young man in the double portrait and the portrait in Berlin with Arnold of Guelders and not with a princely dressed rich Italian merchant it would mean that the double portrait - with exception for some indistinguished portraits in illuminated books - is the earliest known really realistic full-length portrait of a medieval prince - and a quite outstanding one. His characteristic features are also visible in e g copies and, most interesting, in a big painting in Versailles which up to now has been discussed in the art literature as a Hawking Party or a Jardin d’amours at Philip the Good’s court but in fact already in the 1430s is mentioned as a Plaidoirie d’amours (See the article Duchesses of Cleves and Books of Hours). Accepting that it really is Arnold of Guelders’s characteristic features that we se portrayed it may help when trying to place other undocumented paintings in their right context, e g those by the mysterious genius called the Master of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. It is e g no longer reasonable to guess that it should be Arnold who kneels before St Nicholas in the lavishly illuminated so-called Egmont Breviary (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York).

The features of the lady in the double portrait are also to be found in several paintings and drawings by or ascribed to Jan or Hubert van Eyck. The possibility that she might be Margaret van Eyck opens to interesting theories about her connections to her brothers and her availability as a model.

Copyright © 2001-2007 Knut Andersson. All rights reserved.