Giovanni Arnolfini

Who was Giovanni Arnolfini?

Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini was a merchant from Lucca, a city in Tuscany, Italy, who spent most of his life in Flanders, then part of the Duchy of Burgundy, probably always based in Bruges, a wealthy trading city and one of the main towns of the Burgundian court.

Giovanni, called here di Nicolao or "son of Nicolao" to distinguish him from his cousin Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini, moved to Bruges in Flanders at an early age to work in the family business and lived there for the rest of his life. He became wealthy trading in silk and other fabrics, tapestries and other precious objects, although in later years he seems to have suffered business reverses, and to have retired from trading. His fame arises because he is the most likely candidate, out of a number of male Arnolfinis, to have been the subject of two portraits by Jan van Eyck, the famous Flemish painter. These are: The Arnolfini Portrait of Giovanni and his wife, dated 1434 and now in London, and another portrait, evidently of the same sitter when slightly older, now in Berlin.

He was presumably born in Pamplona, where his parents lived, but neither the place nor the date are documented.