I was lucky enough to get married last summer. It was a quiet ceremony in a tiny neo-Gothic chapel in a remote corner of Scotland. Friends took photographs, in which everyone present looks happy but ruffled and a little squinty to boot: a strong north-westerly had sprung up just as we were leaving the church, and the sun was shining directly into everybody’s eyes. Looking at our own, joyfully imperfect pictures set me thinking about other much earlier images inspired by love and marriage: more formal images, created in more formal times. Never having previously given it much thought, I realised that some of my favourite paintings fall into the category – one way or another – of marriage pictures. In the spirit of André Malraux’s Musée Imaginaire, I found myself putting together an imaginary exhibition devoted to the subject. So here is my shortlist of pictures to include.
First, The Arnolfini Marriage, by Jan van Eyck, from the National Gallery in London. Painted in 1434, it is one of the earliest and eeriest Renaissance paintings to depict a married couple. Despite the picture’s traditional title, it is not certain that the people whom we encounter in a perfectly kempt bridal chamber are actually Mr and Mrs Arnolfini. Leaving aside the enigma of their identity, this pinched and wary man and his porcelain-skinned wife were surely valued by Van Eyck, to judge by the extravagant flourish of the artist’s signature on the wall above the convex mirror behind them. “Jan van Eyck was here” it declares, suggesting that the picture itself may have been a gift: a lasting reminder of van Eyck’s presence at the propitious moment of their union. It is a secular portrait, in the sense that it shows the couple holding hands at home after their...
