Sexuality and Social Standing in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Double Portrait*

Abstract

In its Visual Acuity, the Arnolfini double portrait (fig. 1) is so beguiling that few have been able to resist its spell: "a simple corner of the real world has suddenly been fixed on to a panel as by magic." But in what ways can we speak of this portrait as a realistic image? How closely, for instance, does it portray a single moment or specific event in these people's lives? Was it meant to be viewed as a marriage document or contract? The Arnolfini double portrait is unique. It is the only fifteenth–century Northern panel to survive showing presumably identifiable contemporaries engaged in some sort of dialogue in a carefully rendered contemporary interior