I have recently become fascinated with the Arnolfini portrait by Jan van Eyck and in the middle of a sleepless night, I found myself reading about it and researching the scholarship around it. As one does when one can’t sleep.

The original piece hangs in the National Gallery in London, but I’ve seen photos of it in various contexts. It was, in fact, on the cover of my AP European History textbook in high school, and I remember thinking her dress was amazing. But I’d never really known that much about it until I took the time to look into it during this sleepless night.

It turns out that no one really knows what is going on in the painting. We don’t even know for sure who the couple is, as there are a few potential candidates. There is a lot of symbolism that could be read into it, leaving us with multiple (and it seems contradictory) interpretations that could all be equally valid. One of the videos that I watched about it described van Eyck’s piece as an “enigma.”

For all the uncertainty about it, though, it is considered to be an extremely important piece, and one of the most complex paintings in Western art.

As I learned more about this mysterious portrait, I was fascinated not only by the art itself, but by the way people seem to respond to it. I realized that part of the reason art historians are so intrigued by the Arnolfini portrait is precisely because there’s so much we don’t know about it. Because of its mysteriousness.

We like patterns. We like resolution. We like to believe that there is meaning in events, places, and objects. And we search for that. When the meaning is uncertain or when we’re denied a clear pattern, it catches our attention.

I am particularly intrigued with the juxtaposition of this desire, this constant searching for patterns and understanding, with the idea that we can never truly know anything outside of our own experience – outside our own head.

In the end, I suppose it all comes back to futility, which I have been rather obsessed with for quite some time. Looking for patterns where none may exist. Looking for answers where there are only questions.

Whatever the reason for this painting’s fame, and whatever the artist’s original intent, it certainly gave me plenty of food for thought as I laid in bed trying to go back to sleep in the middle of a howling nor’easter.