Arnolfini's Marriage Painting: Wedding or Funeral?

When we go into details about the painting "Arnolfini's Marriage", which was thought to represent a wedding for many years, we actually encounter a tragedy. The people seen in the painting by Belgian Jan van Eyck are the artist's friends Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and Costanza Trenta, who died while giving birth in 1433, one year before the date of the painting. This detail about Costanza adds a tragic context to the picture. Let's trace the traces of this tragedy by looking at the details.

For example, the position of our couple holding their hands: Arnolfini's holding of his bride's open hand is interpreted as still holding on to her as her life slips from his hands.

When we look at the couple's hands a little more closely, what catches our eye is the 'gargoyle', a creature that symbolizes death.
Let's lift our heads and look at the chandelier and see that the candle on Arnolfini is still burning, but Costanza's candle has melted.

Now, let's pay attention to the dog staring at us at the end of the bride's skirt: If we start from the tradition that in the ancient Roman period, dogs on their graves accompanied women to the afterlife, this seems to add meaning to Costanza's tragedy.
Finally, two details in the painting make us think that the painter may have witnessed this death, too: One of them is that we can see our painter in the mirror that we see in the painting, surrounded by 10 different depictions of "Jesus on the Cross". The other is the painter's signature in Latin, meaning: "Jan van Eyck was here."