The Arnolfini's Mirror, by Wendy McIntyre

The Arnolfini Portrait, by Jan van Eyck (Belgium) 1434

The Arnolfini's Mirror

This is the way we wish marriage was -
the Arnolfini couple hand-fasted
in the honey-coloured room in Bruges,
their sidelong gaze melding them,
as much as the clasping of hands,
his left within her right, equally slender, and pale as milk.

 We see them standing, two shoulder-breadths apart
in their magnificent wedding clothes.
Her emerald gown, trimmed in ermine, has a full train
whose folds
make a sculptured sea upon the polished boards.
The dress’s sumptuousness, its high padded waist
serve to show how modest is the bearing
of the woman herself.
Her face is the small flower here.

Her new husband, in his dark-brown calf-length cloak,
resembles an elongated bell.
His somewhat ridiculous stovepipe hat
black, full-brimmed
lengthens a face already lean and vulpine.
He has the pallor of the banker
cloistered with numbers,
deploying skills, gleaned out of Italy,
to make them multiply.

As evidence of his wealth, we see
the open casement with its glazed medallions
the oranges ripening on the sill,
the metalwork chandelier with its look of Brussels lace,
the little dog at their feet, rare as a Pekinese,
and the bevelled mirror on the wall behind them,
exactly above their joined white hands,
which reveals aspects of the room
that would otherwise be hidden from us,
the beams of the ceiling,
a second window,
and two witnesses, one in sky blue,
who have stood in silence as the couple spoke their vows.

We know that one of the witnesses
was the painter himself.
Johann de Eyck fuit hic he inscribed beneath the mirror
Johann van Eyck was here.
He, the maker, plied the wafer-thin layers
of paint, lap over lap
so translucent, they trap the light
and render this moment of mild union
eternal for us.
We too are witnesses to a yet unsullied
promise in a honey-coloured room.

In her apartment in Wood Green
when she was studying at the LSE,
my friend Linda had a framed print
of the Arnolfinis’ marriage on her wall.
There was an uncanny melding, in that
the young husband she would shortly meet
had a vulpine beauty, much like
the tall-hatted banker in Bruges.

Linda’s marriage ended badly,
but there must have been, in the beginning,
a yielding gaze, a hand-fasting,
of wholly ripening promise,
the equal of that nuptial chamber,
where van Eyck stood witness
and caught the light in wafer-thin
layers of paint,
and showed Love trembling,
in joyous expectation of perfection,
shining back at us
out of a mirror, bevelled and all-revealing.

Wendy MacIntyre
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Wendy MacIntyre: "I am a Scots-born Canadian citizen, with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Of my five novels published with Canadian literary presses, the most recent is Hunting Piero (Thistledown Press, 2017), which The Toronto Star called “a fabulist tale that crosses the centuries with its themes of art, ethics and the natural world.” I have also published short fiction and poetry in literary journals including Cleaver Magazine, The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review and Acumen (U.K.) My author’s website is wendymacintyreauthor.ca."