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Fine Arts Describing an Artwork

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Submitted By prooney15
Words 874
Pages 4
Patric Rooney
Intro to Fine Arts
Gary Towne
The fine arts are comprised of multiple forms of arts, two of them being visual art and music. I decided to analyze one piece of visual art and one piece of music, based on several different elements of the respective categories. I chose to begin with the visual art piece, The Arnolfini Wedding, because of its many small and intricate details hidden in the artwork.
Jan van Eyck (Flemish, before 1390-1441), The Arnolfini Wedding, 1434, oil on oak panel of 3 vertical boards, 82.2 cm × 60 cm, National Gallery of Art, London, is an intricate piece of art with many minuscule details that contain an abundance of symbolism and meaning. One of the first things to catch your eye will be the man and woman standing in the forefront of the image. At first, one may believe that the woman in the velvet green robe is pregnant, but it has been found that this was actually excess fabric from her robe creating the bump on her stomach. Both the man and woman have their hands in positions that imply that they are taking some type of oath, more specifically an oath of marriage. The clothing worn by the wedding couple is common clothing of their time, for people of the upper class. If you were to zoom in on the picture, you begin to realize the realistic qualities of all of the textures in the painting.
One use of this skill that jumps out at me is the lifelike beads that sit beside the circular mirror. If you look closely at the gear shaped mirror you can see small circular images in each one of “teeth” of the mirror. These images appear to be of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Knowing that the mirror contains images of the crucifixion of

Jesus, one could imply that the beads next to the mirror are in fact an old style rosary, possibly symbolizing the faith in the marriage. Another minor detail in the

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