Room 52

The mirror in The Arnolfini Portrait reflects a space beyond the figures you first see. Jan van Eyck’s tiny details help a painted room seem continuous and inhabited. Nearby, Rogier van der Weyden’s The Magdalene Reading gives the same close attention to fabric, a face and a book. Fifteenth-century painters in the Low Countries developed new ways to use oil paint for fine changes of light and texture. Their pictures found patrons in courts, cities and religious communities. Compare the sheen of one object with a softly modelled face. Dieric Bouts’s The Entombment uses a different material, glue-size on linen, and rewards a comparison of surfaces as well as subjects.