Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) was a Flemish painter and innovator of Early Northern Renaissance art. His painting The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) depicts an Italian merchant and his wife in their Flemish home, and is renowned for its rich color palette and layers of symbolic iconography. Several objects have been carefully placed around the room to tell the viewer something about the couple - their wealth, the strength of their union, their religious piety, and her fertility. Its complexity is further compounded by a highly reflective mirror on the back wall that expands the viewer’s knowledge of the scene, showing the presence of two more figures, one perhaps the artist himself. The painting’s symbolic ambiguity has inspired a lively art historical debate, ensuring the painting’s ongoing interpretation.

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