Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait Meets Pre-Raphaelites at National Gallery

This autumn, the National Gallery in London will present Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites, an unprecedented exhibition pairing Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (1434) with works by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their followers. Acquired by the National Gallery in 1842, van Eyck's masterpiece captivated Victorian audiences and young artists who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, drawn to late medieval and early Renaissance art. The convex mirror in the portrait inspired their exploration of symbolic objects. Key loans from the Tate's Pre-Raphaelite collection include Sir John Everett Millais's Mariana (1851), Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1848-9), William Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience (1853), and William Morris's La Belle Iseult (1858), his only known oil painting. The exhibition runs from October 2, 2017 to April 2, 2018 at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square.