Портрет Джованни ди Николао Арнольфини

Most people know this face from somewhere else. Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini was a silk and cloth merchant from Lucca who spent his life in Bruges, and he is almost certainly the man standing in Jan van Eyck's famous double portrait in London, the one with the little dog and the round mirror. This small panel is van Eyck's second portrait of him, made a few years later toward the end of the artist's life. Same long face, same prominent nose, now under a great folded red chaperon of the kind wealthy men wound around their heads. That a painter as sought-after as van Eyck should portray the same merchant twice has led scholars to suspect the two men were simply friends. Van Eyck died in 1441, not long after finishing it.