Dear Reader,
I'm pleased to introduce today's guest author A. Natasha Joukovsky and her debut novel, The Portrait of a Mirror.
The Arnolfini Portrait
Today is my eighth wedding anniversary, and in nostalgically revisiting the occasion's announcement in The New York Times, its photograph reminds me of another image: Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait of 1434. First, there's the basic composition: a man on the left and a woman on the right, standing in concert. Our hand positions, too, are reminiscent, if mirror images. Arnolfini's left joins his wife's right in a show of unity; his own right hand is raised in an oath-like gesture. It's my left hand that reaches for my husband, who cradles my elbow in return, modernly closing the gap between us so we're in full, as opposed to three-quarter profile. In holding a clear umbrella over our heads, my husband's left hand is raised in much the same position as Arnolfini's right, the umbrella itself forming a near-perfect inversion of their gilded chandelier.
We are all well-dressed: the men, more somberly if still lushly, while lady Arnolfini and I sport festive colors. There has been some effort, in both cases, to coordinate. Much has been said of the visible softness van Eyck achieves in the fur trimming both Arnolfinis' mantles. The sliver of my husband's red tie seems even less incidental. My shoes half slip off as I lean toward him; two pairs in the painting are cast aside. Though the rest of the iconography is different, its function remains the same. These are images intended to convey not only a published promise, but a certain Bourgeois prosperity. The Arnolfini interior is richly-adorned, worldly in its intimacy--there's the vermillion bedspread, the carelessly strewn oranges, the extraordinary convex mirror. We're outside, rather, on a vaguely panoptic Manhattan rooftop, and yet there's something similarly private if not fully "interior" about it; a kind of concavity. The hook of a second, cast-off umbrella can be seen at left, in the same place where the Arnolfinis' oranges lie.
We were not attempting to echo van Eyck's painting--indeed, despite the show of leisure, the photo was taken by my cousin in the middle of a hectic workday, after the Times requested a different one than we'd previously provided. But like the Arnolfini Portrait, like marriage itself, what I see in it changes over time. When my eyes return to van Eyck's painting, they're drawn to the other two figures, in red and blue, reflected in the mirror. There have been many theories as to their identities over the centuries--wedding guests? Notary and witness? The artist himself?
Today, I can't help but see them as us.
-- A. Natasha Joukovsky
Email Natasha at [email protected]
More About Today's Author...
Natasha holds a BA in English from the University of Virginia and an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business. She spent five years in the art world, working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. After business school, she began a career in management consulting, joining Accenture Strategy in 2014. Natasha lives in Washington, D.C.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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