Arnolfini Portrait

Movement: Northern Renaissance While Italy was reviving ancient Rome, painters in Flanders chased the look of real things, down to the last bead. Jan van Eyck's small 1434 panel shows a richly dressed couple, probably an Italian merchant working in Bruges and his wife, in a private room. Oranges catch the light by the window, beads cast tiny shadows, and a convex mirror on the back wall reflects the room and two visitors at the door. Oil paint made that realism possible, and that is the Northern Renaissance in one picture. It hangs in the National Gallery in London. What came next: in Italy, the same hunger for real space and real bodies reached its peak in grand classical scenes.