Bringing art into the library

Teaching Pre K-8, Oct 1995 by Hurst, Carol Otis

The distance between art and literature is a short one, and it presents an opportunity to get the art department into the library. So let's step into a painting this month and see if we can hook it to literature in some interesting ways for middle school students.

For our purposes, we'll take a print that's widely available and has lots of symbolism: Jan van Eyck's "The Arnolfini Marriage." It's that medieval wedding portrait where the bride is quite obviously pregnant. (I knew you'd remember it.)

The original painting hangs in the National Gallery in London, but if you have access to the Internet, you can see it (and many other wonderful paintings) at the Web Museum site. (http:sunsite.unc.edu/wm/). If you want to go directly to van Eyck, it's http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/paint/aut/ eyck/. In any case, you'll want a slide or a print of the painting for the close examination we're going to encourage, so borrow a slide from a college art department if you can't get a copy of the print itself.

With eagle eyes. Let the kids look at the image and tell you what they notice. Write down each response; there are no wrong answers to such a question. When you think they've mined the field of possibilities to their level of completion, ask the art teacher to show them more noteworthy things, or point out some of the following yourself:

* the bride's and groom's clothing show the dress of the merchant class in the 15th century.

* the couple isn't smiling and they're obviously quite young--but most middle school kids won't think so.

* a single candle is burning even though it's daytime.

* there's an image of St. Margaret carved on the back of the chair. (No, I didn't recognize her; I read it in an art book.)

* van Eyck's signature is in Latin, which translates to: "Jan van Eyck was present." This probably means he was a witness at their wedding.

* an ornate mirror on the back wall of the room shows the artist himself as well as a second man, who may have been another witness to the ceremony.

* a small dog stands between the couple in the foreground and on the window ledge is a bowl of fruit.

* the bridal couple is barefoot and there's a pair of sandals in the picture's lower left-hand corner.

Most of these things are symbolic, and the kids probably won't get most of them on their own. According to the Web Museum site, the candle may be a bridal candle, God's all-seeing eye, or a devotional candle. St. Margaret is the patron saint of women in childbirth. The dog is thought to be the symbol of faithfulness and love. The fruit is fertility and/or the fall fro Eden, an the sandals somehow, I'm told, signify the sanctity of marriage.

Bridging to books. Ask the kids to name books that the painting brings to mind, and again, accept all answers. If you asked me, I would name Karen Cushman's delightful novels: Catherine, Called Birdy (Clarion, 1994) and The Midwife's Apprentice (Clarion, 1995). Both of these are set about a hundred years before van Eyck's painting, but subject and era are close enough.

In the May 1995 issue of Teaching K-8, I went on and on about Catherine, so I'11 only say here that there are three weddings in that book set in the middle ages, and they each contrast well with the one in the painting. In the first, Catherine's brother's bride is pregnant for the ceremony and the groom's rank is about that of the pictured groom. The marriage of Meg and Alf would have looked very different, and students may want to describe how a painting of that scene might look. Birdy's own probable marriage to Stephen which, at the end of the book, hasn't yet occurred, may look more like the one in the portrait. One more reference to the painting: when Birdy's mother is ill after the birth of a child, Birdy prays to St. Margaret.

The Midwife's Apprentice (Clarion, 1995, ISBN 0-395-66929-6) is almost as good, but deals with a society far lower on the rung than Birdy's and Arnolfini's. The insight it gives into that approximate time period is just as strong, however.

Obviously, we could go from the painting into a whole literary and art survey of the middle ages and, in my May 1995 column, I listed many books about that era, so take that direction if you like.

Other avenues. There's no shortage of books about childbirth and pregnancy, so this is another road you could travel. Try wedding customs now and then, too. The picture of the artist in the convex mirror of the painting is a possible lead-in to the presence of an author in his or her own work of literature. It's easy to find novels based on an author's real experiences, but how about looking instead at the point of view of the author in a given work. Whose voice represents his or hers?

Van Eyck's painting is replete with symbols, just as literature is. But the whole idea of symbolism in literature may be new to middle school students, so it might be best to start with some books that are in themselves symbolic: allegories.

Try Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree (Harper, 1964, LC 64-011840) for a start. Although I never loved it, many people do, and it's obviously allegorical. Chris van Allsburg's The Wretched Stone (Houghton Mifflin, 1991, ISBN 0-395-53307-4) and The Stranger (Houghton Mifflin, 1986, ISBN 0-39542331-7) work too.