I had been invited to see the special opening of a new artwork that had come from London. I walked up the steps of the Art Gallery, huffing and wheezing as I reached the top. As I looked around, I realised I had no idea where I was. I looked around me and saw wonderful works of art both from foreign and local artists. Then I saw other newspaper reviewers running all over the place, apparently lost as well. A large mob of them though had gathered around a certain artwork and I raced over to get a good position. A splendid painting was displayed in front of me and after peering intensely at the label on the bottom of the artwork realised this was Jan Van Eyck’s, ‘The Arnolfini Wedding’. The label stated that this was a realistic artwork painted in the 1430’s and is a small full-length double portrait, which is believed to represent the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and possibly his wife presumably in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the more original and complex paintings in Western art because of the iconography, the use of the mirror to reflect an inverted reflection of the space and the portrait is also considered unique by some art historians as the record of a marriage contract in the form of a painting. Van Eyck used the painstaking technique of applying layer after layer of thin translucent glazes to create a painting with an intensity of tone and colour. The glowing colours used within the painting also help to highlight the realism, and to show the material wealth of Arnolfini's world. Van Eyck took advantage in using the longer drying time of oil paint, compared to tempera, to blend colours by painting wet-in-wet to achieve slight variations in light and shade to intensify the illusion of three-dimensional forms. The medium of oil paint also allowed Van Eyck to capture surface appearance and distinguish different textures precisely. He also exploited the effects of both direct and diffuse light by showing...