the bridegroom, and the bridegroom would confirm this by raising his hand. The tradition of a pledge was followed, generally a ring placed on the finger of the bride. The joining of hands was one of the most important conditions, for this had always formed an integral part of Jewish marriage-ceremonies as well as those of Greece and Rome. All these words and actions meant nothing more than a solemn promise of faith (Panofsky 196-197).
Panofsky finds a similarity between the scene in this painting and that in another painting of a wedding of the same private sort. He says that the two scenes, while they have their differences, resemble one another in that the ceremony takes place in the absence of a priest and is accomplished by raising the forearm and joining hands. Panofsky concludes,
Thus the precocious apparition of a full-length double portrait can be explained by Jan van Eyck's adapting a compositional scheme not uncommon to the iconography of marriage pictures (Panofsky 199).
Panofsky finds that a number of the elements in the picture which differ from traditional marriage pictures can be attributed to a desire on the part of the artist to create an artistic composition. Panofsky says that an examination of the Arnolfini portrait is striking
by the amount of tender personal feeling with which the artist has ingested the conventional gesture and, on the other hand, by the solemn rigidity of the figures, particularly that of the bridegroom. Van Eyck took the liberty of joining the right hand of the bride with the left of the bridegroom, contrary to ritual and contrary, also, to all the other representations of a marriage ceremony (Panofsky 199).
Panofsky finds that the locale for the painting has to be seen as a "nuptial chamber," or a room hallowed by sacramental associations and which even used to be consecrated with a special benediction. He says this is demonstrated by the fact that there is only one ca...