2.14.2011

Love in Renaissance Flanders

I loved the work of the 15th century Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck long before we moved to Belgium. I'm particularly fond of his portrait of a young couple, Giovanni and Giovanna Arnolfini, and of Robert Lowell's spot-on description of the pair in his poem "Marriage."

They are rivals in homeliness and love;
her hand lies like china in his,
her other hand
is in touch with the head of her unborn child.
They wait and pray,
as if the airs of heaven
that blew on them when they married
were now a common visitation . . .

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