CAROLA WAS PUTTING the finishing touches to this book only hours before suffering a fatal brain haemorrhage, almost certainly linked to her advanced cancer. Writing Girl in a Green Gown had supported her in her final illness, and was a great comfort.
Using Carola’s methodical and meticulous research notes, handwritten comments on the manuscript and excellent bibliography, I hope I have accurately incorporated all the amendments she would have wished to make and answered outstanding queries. Any omissions, errors or ambiguities are mine. Some queries needed just a little detective work. Was the ‘M of A’ scrawled on an information sheet about New York’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art a shorthand for Marriage of Arnolfini, i.e. the portrait itself, or a reference to one of its early owners, Marguerite of Austria? It was the latter. Others were more complicated. The ‘Late payments?’ reference in a passage on van Eyck’s employment as court painter to Duke Philip the Good was eventually resolved by looking at Flemish archival documents attached as appendices to various nineteenth-century tomes. My knowledge of Dutch proved handy here, while a background in advertising and journalism was useful in amplifying the outline on how the portrait was used in the mass media of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. My only contribution not based on Carola’s original research concerned the question of why the Arnolfini was never Picture of the Month during the Second World War. The reason, from a reading of the wartime correspondence between the director, Sir Kenneth Clark, and Martin Davies, his assistant keeper looking after the Snowdonia safe house, appeared to be that Clark thought only the larger pictures should be displayed because they would have more impact on the public.
Carola’s last notes, under the heading ‘Conclusion’, simply asked two questions:
Is the portrait medieval or modern?
Why do we still so like the portrait?
From her conversations with me and our daughter Colette it is clear she would have answered ‘both’ to the first question. The Arnolfini certainly appealed to medieval viewers, who would have had no difficulty in understanding the symbolism which baffles us. Yet this first-known double portrait in a domestic setting also fascinates modern viewers because it is a work of genius – a classic capable of being reinterpreted in every generation. In reply to the second question, she would have explained that its precision, clarity and luminosity (so technically brilliant that some have claimed van Eyck must have employed mechanical devices or even dabbled in the black arts) make it particularly appealing to us today, surrounded as we are by images everywhere. As others have observed, its smooth photographic finish and self-contained details like the mirror, chandelier and dog make it ideally suited for interactive display, digital advertising, and other high-definition applications. And in the third-dimensional holographic media of the future this adaptable portrait, glowing with unearthly light, will surely continue to hold its own.
Carola would, too, have reiterated her stance on interpretation. That old saying about the portrait, ‘a thousand art historians have put forward a thousand theories’, may well be true but, as she says in this book, an obsession with what it means can be a blind alley, a profitless diversion that detracts from enjoyment of the painting as a work of art. Unless lost documents (unaccountably missed by hordes of researchers over the years) turn up in those Flemish archives, we will never know for sure whether the couple in the portrait is indeed Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, rich Italian merchant of Bruges, and his putative second wife (or possibly his late wife Costanza) or what the context really is. The carefully worded caption in the National Gallery, wisely following the Occam’s Razor principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, states, ‘The picture is often interpreted as a depiction of a marriage ceremony. It is in fact a particularly elaborate portrait of Arnolfini and his wife.’ The simplest explanation is not invariably correct, but it so often is. Carola, believing that this was an image primarily designed to show off social status, wealth and importance, whatever else it may contain in the way of hidden symbolism, would not have dissented from the set description.
Finally, for fun, Carola would have urged anyone who really wished to understand the true complexity of this work to try their hand at the fiendishly difficult 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, which our son Toby gave to her as a Christmas present in 2008; two years later it remained uncompleted despite copious help from our old friend Steve Russell, an artist with a quick eye for matching colour. Details such as the chandelier, mirror and patterned carpet, which all have distinctive markings, are reasonably easy to conquer. Even the green dress, looking dauntingly uniform at first, is achievable once you have realised the folds and plaits are painted to a formula. The real challenge is in the areas of shadow created by intricate systems of hatched brushwork, the man’s sable coat and the bare wooden boards of the floor and ceiling. So subtle and imperceptible are the gradations of colour and hue here that it can easily take up to one hour to click in a single piece; the gaps that are yet to be filled remain as a fitting testimony to a magical mastery of oil paint.
On the many occasions since Carola’s death that I have stood before the Arnolfini, there have always been others on the spot, silent and entranced as they study this most mysterious of masterpieces – alien yet somehow very modern – which continues to cast its spell as it has done for centuries.
Gary Hicks
Carola’s husband
July 2011