Jan Van Eyck is considered as one of the greatest artist when considering Renaissance art and his skill, as an oil painter is well thought of as outstanding. He used to exploit the oil paints and build layers of transparent glazes and portray minutest details in his paintings. His minute finishing and detailed portrait can be well explained in the painting of Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini who was a merchant of Lucca with his wife Geovanna Cenami.The portrait not only displays the minute details of the personalities but has a signature on the back wall, ‘Jan Van Eyck was here, 1434’, his reflection in the mirror hat gives the impression that he was there as a witness for their marriage. There is a carving of Saint Margaret on the bed and a dog is present there, which is considered as a symbol of faithfulness from time immemorial.The description of the portrait alone tells the whole story and this is quite a big achievement where words are not used but people understand the whole thing.
It has been said that no other painter has achieved the credit of making such portraits on which exact measure of gems could be cut and put on the crown or pearls put on the robe. Even the simple and unnoticed element is displayed so ordinarily and naturally which otherwise would have been left out by other painters.But this is not so with Jan Van Eyck. Each work describes on its own the face and body, the environment and goes beyond all these to symbolic imagination too. Jan van Eyck’s attitude towards nature seems to be medieval where objects are related to God and symbols like the little dog, which is to marital faithfulness. A great combination of vision, symbolism and spiritualism could be seen in his paintings.
