It is a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their residence at the Flemish city of Bruges.

A simple corner of the real world had suddenly been fixed on to a panel as if by magic... For the first time in history the artist became the perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term".

[6] Signed and dated by van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera.

The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for "its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it".

[9] Although the woman's plain gold necklace and the rings that both wear are the only jewellery visible, both outfits would have been enormously expensive, and appreciated as such by a contemporary viewer.

The relation possibly began with a tapestry order including the images of Notre Dame Cathedral in return of a good payment.

Details such as the snuffed candle above the woman, the scenes after Christ's death on her side of the background roundel, and the black garb of the man, support this view.

[11] The man in this painting is the subject of a further portrait by van Eyck in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, leading to speculation he was a friend of the artist.

While Panofsky's claim that the painting formed a kind of certificate of marriage is not accepted by all art historians, his analysis of the symbolic function of the details is broadly agreed, and has been applied to many other Early Netherlandish paintings, especially a number of depictions of the Annunciation set in richly detailed interiors, a tradition for which the Arnolfini Portrait and the Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin represent the start (in terms of surviving works at least).

Margaret D. Carroll argues that the painting is a portrait of a married couple that alludes also to the husband's grant of legal authority to his wife.

[19] Carroll also proposes that the portrait was meant to affirm Giovanni Arnolfini's good character as a merchant and aspiring member of the Burgundian court.

Harbison argues that "Jan van Eyck is there as storyteller ... [who] must have been able to understand that, within the context of people's lives, objects could have multiple associations", and that there are many possible purposes for the portrait and ways it can be interpreted.

Lorne Campbell in the National Gallery Catalogue sees no need to find a special meaning in the painting: "... there seems little reason to believe that the portrait has any significant narrative content.

"[23] He suggests that the double portrait was very possibly made to commemorate a marriage, but not a legal record and cites examples of miniatures from manuscripts showing similarly elaborate inscriptions on walls as a normal form of decoration at the time.

Herman Colenbrander has proposed that the painting may depict an old German custom of a husband promising a gift to his bride on the morning after their wedding night.

[24] In 2016, French physician Jean-Philippe Postel, in his book L'Affaire Arnolfini, agreed with Koster that the woman is dead, but he suggested that she is appearing to the man as a spectre, asking him to pray for her soul.

[29] However, the subjects originally thought by most scholars to be represented in this painting, Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami, were of equal status and rank in the courtly system, so the theory would not hold true.

She suggests that the painting deploys the imagery of a contract between an already married couple giving the wife the authority to act on her husband's behalf in business dealings.

Another indication that the woman is not pregnant is that Giovanna Cenami (the identification of the woman according to most earlier scholars) died childless,[33] as did Costanza Trenta (a possible identification according to recent archival evidence);[15] whether a hypothetical unsuccessful pregnancy would have been left recorded in a portrait is questionable, although if it is indeed Costanza Trenta, as Koster proposed, and she died in childbirth, then the oblique reference to pregnancy gains strength.

Moreover, the beauty ideal embodied in contemporary female portraits and clothing rest in the first place on the high valuation on the ability of women to bear children.

Furthermore, the brush and the rock crystal prayer-beads (a popular engagement present from the future bridegroom) appearing together on either side of the mirror may also allude to the dual Christian injunctions ora et labora (pray and work).

Assuming a spherical mirror, the distortion has been correctly portrayed, except for the leftmost part of the window frame, the near edge of the table, and the hem of the dress.

[35] Lit in full daylight, like the sanctuary lamp in a church, the candle may allude to the presence of the Holy Ghost or the ever-present eye of God.

The oranges which lie on the window sill and chest may symbolize the purity and innocence that reigned in the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Man.

The idea that he has taken his off may imply that he would no longer stray, hinting at his fidelity towards his wife, potentially signifying that, for religious reasons, he would not remarry after her death.

[citation needed] In January 2018 the woman's dress was the subject of the BBC Four programme A Stitch in Time with fashion historian Amber Butchart.

At some point before 1516 it came into the possession of Don Diego de Guevara (d. Brussels 1520), a Spanish career courtier of the Habsburgs (himself the subject of a fine portrait by Michael Sittow in the National Gallery of Art).

[49] By 1516 he had given the portrait to Margaret of Austria, Habsburg Regent of the Netherlands, when it shows up as the first item in an inventory of her paintings, made in her presence at Mechelen.

A painting of two of his young daughters, Infantas Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela of Spain (Prado), commissioned by Philip clearly copies the pose of the figures.

More relevant to the real facts is no doubt Hay's presence at the Battle of Vitoria (1813) in Spain, where a large coach loaded by King Joseph Bonaparte with easily portable artworks from the royal collections was first plundered by British troops, before what was left was recovered by their commanders and returned to the Spanish.