structural:expansion, stylistic:tone, linguistic:voice_change
Provenance

The provenance of the painting begins in 1435 when it was dated by van Eyck and presumably owned by the sitter(s). At some point before 1516 it came into the possession of Don Diego de Guevara (d. Brussels 1520), a Spanish career courtier of the Habsburgs (himself the subject of a fine portrait by Michael Sittow in the National Gallery of Art). He lived most of his life in the Netherlands, and may have known the Arnolfinis in their later years.

By 1516 he had given the portrait to Margaret of Austria, Habsburg Regent of the Netherlands, when it shows up as the first item in an inventory of her paintings, made in her presence at Mechelen. The item says (in French): "a large picture which is called Hernoul le Fin with his wife in a chamber, which was given to Madame by Don Diego, whose arms are on the cover of the said picture; done by the painter Johannes." A note in the margin says "It is necessary to put on a lock to close it: which Madame has ordered to be done." In a 1523–4 Mechelen inventory, a similar description is given, although this time the name of the subject is given as "Arnoult Fin".

In 1530 the painting was inherited by Margaret's niece Mary of Hungary, who in 1556 went to live in Spain. It is clearly described in an inventory taken after her death in 1558, when it was inherited by Philip II of Spain. A painting of two of his young daughters, Infantas Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela of Spain (Prado), commissioned by Philip clearly copies the pose of the figures. In 1599 a German visitor saw it in the Alcazar Palace in Madrid. Now it had verses from Ovid painted on the frame: "See that you promise: what harm is there in promises? In promises anyone can be rich." It is very likely that Velázquez knew the painting, which may have influenced his Las Meninas, which shows a room in the same palace. In 1700 the painting appeared in an inventory after the death of Carlos II with shutters and the verses from Ovid.

The painting survived the fire in the Alcazar which destroyed some of the Spanish royal collection, and by 1794 had been moved to the "Palacio Nuevo", the present Royal Palace of Madrid. In 1816 the painting was in London, in the possession of Colonel James Hay, a Scottish soldier. He claimed that after he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Waterloo the previous year, the painting hung in the room where he convalesced in Brussels. He fell in love with it, and persuaded the owner to sell. More relevant to the real facts is no doubt Hay's presence at the Battle of Vitoria (1813) in Spain, where a large coach loaded by King Joseph Bonaparte with easily portable artworks from the royal collections was first plundered by British troops, before what was left was recovered by their commanders and returned to the Spanish.

Hay offered the painting to the Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, via Sir Thomas Lawrence. The Prince had it on approval for two years at Carlton House before eventually returning it in 1818. Around 1828, Hay gave it to a friend to look after, not seeing it or the friend for the next thirteen years, until he arranged for it to be included in a public exhibition in 1841. It was bought the following year (1842) by the recently formed National Gallery, London for £600, as inventory number 186, where it remains. By then the shutters had gone, along with the original frame.