Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Po

Sobre el libro Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Po de Carola Hicks publicado por Vintage UK al 2012:

It´s a small painting... and is on display at London´s National Gallery in the Sainsbury Wing. I´ve viewed it a few times on the wall in a relatively dark corner of a room, along with other Flemish and medieval paintings. I´ve also seen parodies of the painting; certainly it is parodied almost as much as that other iconic picture of a couple, Grant Wood´s "American Gothic". The painting I´m referring to is "The Arnolfini Portrait", painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434 and which is the subject of the late British art historian Carola Hicks´ book, "Girl in a Green Gown".
Carola Hicks has written an almost compulsively readable book about the painting. She not only covers the painting and its subjects - the identities of whom are themselves open to conjecture - but she discusses the chain of owners of the painting. Owned by a succession of Habsburg rulers in Bruges, the picture eventually found its way to Spain when Charles V´s sister - who had owned the painting - moved from Bruges to Madrid. Three centuries or so of ownership by members of the ongoing line of Habsburg til 1699, ans then French Bourbon rulers, the painting was looted/taken/given (the exact details of the transfer from Spanish possession to British are a bit murky) after the Battle of Vitoria in 1813, when British forces under Wellington, defeated the Spanish/French army. A British Army officer ended up with the painting, which he eventually sold in 1842 to the British government, who was establishing a "National Gallery". The "Arnolfini" was quickly established by museum patrons and art historians as one of the Gallery´s favorite paintings. Protected during two world wars, the work is now displayed, as I said, in a darkish corner of a room.