In the Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban, there is a heavy amount of detail on the man's (who may possibly be Van Eyck himself) face from his stubble to his wrinkles; this happens to be because of the aristotelian idea of making things look natural. Something to note about this piece in particular is the frame around it which has “as I can” written in greek at the top & his name as well as the date the portrait was finished at the bottom of the frame which could possibly represent the fact that van Eyck somehow knew his piece would be a part of history.
The inspirations I took from this piece was the 3 quarter turn as well as the very naturalistic (true to reality) depiction of this man (himself?) that Van Eyck presents.
The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck is widely regarded as a wedding portrait, however, the portrait may really be about the wealth of this presumed couple. The main man represented in this portrait was known to be a merchant & everything captured in this portrait from their luxurious clothes to their fancy decorations is meant to show off their wealth. Although that is definitely one of the main aspects of the piece there also happens to be a bit of symbolism, mostly the fact that their shoes are off representing they're on sacred ground, that some sort of religious ceremony or important event is about to take place. This is why many people believe this to be a wedding portrait, but we’ll never know for sure.
The key inspirations I took from this piece were the high amounts of detail as I have discussed in the description of the previous masterpiece & the idea of a portrait containing two characters, which I did not explore the themes of further like Van Eyck did for this painting. My intent was not to imply Spongebob & Squidward are married.
