St. Jerome In The Arnofini Wedding

St. Jerome in his study and the Arnofini wedding are two very famous masterpieces, both were created in the early renaissance, when art was flourishing in new life. Despite both art works being created around the same time frame they were fashioned very differently, Jan Van Eyck the Arnofini Wedding was an oil painting while St. Jerome in his study by Albrecht Drer was engraved into a slat of wood then stamped onto a canvas. Although crafted differently they both have microscopic details and both have a great deal of symbolism hidden in them.

There is a massive amount of symbolism in the arnolfini wedding however some of the most interesting things are the small mirror in the back round. If the observer looks carefully at the mirror he/she can see that a mirror image was painted in it and bordering the mirror is the cycle or Christ. It is astounding how much minuscule details were put into this painting! Secondly the orange on the windowsill represents the couple’s wealth. There are so many simple every day items in this painting that can be easily over looked it is astonishing how much of it there is.
However unlike the arnofini wedding, St.
Jerome in his study has odd objects to represent the symbolism while the arnofini wedding has everyday items that one has to really think about to grasp the concept. A few thing that jump out at your are the giant lion, the halo around the persons head and the cardinal hat hanging on the wall. If someone did not know the tittle of the painting or stamp then they could identify it as St. Jerome by these objects. Another fascinating entity is the skull on the window seat possibly representing how Christians have eternal life through Christ. It is truly mind boggling to think that this was engraved into a piece of wood all the miniature detail, the lighting and depth are astounding as well, it is hard to belive this was stamped onto a
canvas.
Although these two master pieces where fashioned in two extremely different ways they both still are similar in the fact that they both posses masses of symbolism both suttle and blatted such as the mirror or something more ovbvious for instance the massive lion in the front on St Jerome in his study. Also both were created within about one hundred years of each other in the renaissance era. Furthermore both handiworks have religious attrubuites hidden in the backround, with some more so then others like the life of Jesus Christ on the mirror. These two astonishing works of art are fascinating one could stare at them for hours just finding all the hidden meanings concealed within them.