This work is a portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini & his wife, but is not intended as a record of their wedding. His wife is not pregnant, as is often thought, but holding up her full-skirted dress in the contemporary fashion. Arnolfini was a member of a merchant family from Lucca living in Bruges. The couple are shown in a well-appointed interior. The ornate Latin signature translates as ' Jan van Eyck was here 1434'. The similarity to modern graffiti is not accidental. Van Eyck often inscribed his pictures in a witty way. The mirror reflects two figures in the doorway. One may be the painter himself. Arnolfini raises his right hand as he faces them, perhaps as a greeting. Van Eyck was intensely interested in the effects of light: oil paint allowed him to depict it with great subtlety in this picture, notably on the gleaming brass chandelier. ...

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The portrait appears to be a copy of a lost portrait. It looks quite like another in the Vatican Gallery. These seem to be identified as Niccolo Marcello on the basis of its resemblence, not actually very close, to a medal in which he is named on the in ...

This portrait was formerly attributed to Velázquez, who is named in the inscription as painter to King Philip IV of Spain. However, it is close in style to Mazo & may either be a copy by him after a lost original by Velázquez, or, more probably, an independent work bearing a misleading signature. It is likely the portrait was executed shortly after 1647 since it shows the sitter wearing the Knight's badge of the Order of Santiago, which he was awarded that year. ...

The present portrait is almost certainly identical with the one of Don Andrés del Peral which was chosen by Goya for exhibition at the Real Academica de San Fernando in the summer of 1798. Andrés del Peral worked as a craftsman-painter & gilder at the court of Madrid from the late 1770s to the early 1820s. He is the man of the same name who is recorded as having formed a large collection of small paintings by Goya. ...

On the wings, the donor & donatrix have unidentified coats of arms, partly rubbed out, with the letters W B associated with the donor. In the background of the wings: left, the Way to Calvary, right the Resurrection. ...

On the wings, the donor & donatrix have unidentified coats of arms, partly rubbed out, with the letters 'W B' associated with the donor. In the background of the wings: left, the Way to Calvary, right the Resurrection. ...

The peepshow is a rectangular box; the interior is painted on three sides, as well as on the top & bottom. The sixth side is open; originally light would have entered the box from this side, perhaps through specially treated paper stretched across it. T ...

Joseph-Nicolas-Blaise Forlenze (1751?
- 1833) was educated in Naples & later became an oculist & surgeon in Paris. The orders &
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Dr Ralph Schomberg (1714
- 1792) was a physician; he is said to have settled in Bath about 1761 & was apparently still there in
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