Portrait of a Marriage

The Arnolfini Wedding is a central image of my first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, and it appeared on the jacket of the Crown hardcover in 1995. I still have a thing for that painting. There are many ways of reading this picture, and there are endless symbolic elements to decode, from the fruit on the sill to the candles in the light fixture. Among the various interpretations, the painting is thought to be a document, a record of the marriage depicted, with the painter, Van Eyck, appearing in the reflection as a witness.

My 34th wedding anniversary was on Sunday, and perhaps because of that, and also because I just saw the new cover image for the forthcoming Broadway Books paperback re-issue of Objects (Summer 2011), which is a fantastic design with a photograph and not this painting, I found myself wanting to look at the reflection detail particularly. Here it is.