Woman Bathing (van Eyck)

It shows a nude woman taking a sponge bath in an interior setting accompanied by a maid in a red gown. The woman preserves her modesty with a washcloth held in her left hand as she reaches with her right towards a basin placed on a side table. A convex mirror hangs from a central bar in the shuttered window above the basin and shows the reflection of both figures. In the tradition of such scenes, the mirror symbolises virtue and purity, while the dog in the lower center at the woman's feet – barely visible in the Fogg panel due to loss of paint, but more distinguishable in van der Geest's work – represents her fidelity. Her bedchamber is richly detailed; there is a wooden bed to the right, a tall folding chair against the back wall, and wooden beams running across the ceiling. An orange rests on the windowsill, and there are discarded pattens on the floor in the lower left corner. Two other possible works by van Eyck of this style are known from descriptions only. In 1456, the Italian humanist Bartolomeo Facio described a panel in the collection of Ottaviano della Carda, a nephew of Federico da Montefeltro. In the panel, sometimes known as Bathing Woman, the woman is attended by an older clothed maid as she emerges from her bath in a veil of fine linen which leaves only her head and breasts exposed. Facio's description includes details of a dog, a burning lamp similar to the one in the Arnolfini Portrait, and a distant landscape visible through an open window. Facio mentions the innovative use of a mirror, which in the work is full length and reflects the entire back of the woman's body. ==Arnolfini portrait ==

, 1434. National Gallery, London.'' There are many similarities, especially with the Fogg panel, to van Eyck's famous London Arnolfini Portrait. While the former is much narrower and much smaller at 27.2 cm x 16.3 cm, it is around a third the size of the London portrait (without frame 82.6 cm x 60 cm). van Haecht's reproduction is thought closer to the actual scale than the Fogg panel, especially given that the other works in The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest are in general very close to the originals that survived or had their dimensions recorded. Given that van Haecht did not give the work an especially prominent position in his own painting, it is unlikely that he was exaggerating its importance, so it might be reasonably deduced that it was not much smaller than this representation. although it might be better argued that the lost work was a prototype or study. Julius S. Held believed that the Fogg panel was created as a cover for the London painting, an idea that held traction until rejected by Campbell in 1988 when he argued that such a painting was more likely to be covered by wings than a single piece, and that further the London panel in probability does not depict or commemorate either a marriage or betrothal. ==References==