Anthony van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck (born March 22, 1599, Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands [now in Belgium]—died December 9, 1641, London, England) after Peter Paul Rubens the most prominent Flemish Baroque painter of the 17th century. A prolific painter of portraits of European aristocracy, he also executed many works on religious and mythological subjects and was a fine draftsman and etcher.

Background and early years

Van Dyck was the seventh of 12 children of Frans van Dyck, a well-to-do silk merchant. At the age of 10, he was apprenticed to Hendrik van Balen, a successful Antwerp painter, and he must soon have come under the influence of Rubens, who after 1608 assumed undisputed leadership of art in Antwerp.

Van Dyck’s first surviving work, Portrait of a Man, is dated 1613. In the figural compositions of the first eight years of his career, he obviously emulated Rubens’s melodramatic style, though, instead of using Rubens’s technique of enamel-like glazes, he painted directly and with a rather coarse texture. His colour scale is darker and warmer than his mentor’s; his lights and shades are more abrupt; and his figures are more angular in their gestures and less harmoniously proportioned. He exaggerated the expression of his figures, from the fierce fanaticism or feverish ecstasy of saints and the brutality of executioners to the voluptuous smiles of satyrs and the drunken stupor of Silenus, companion to Dionysus, the god of wine.

The Belgian patricians and their wives that he painted during his early years generally are rendered in bust- or knee-length; their hands hold gloves or other articles or fall idly over the back or armrest of a chair. His earliest portraits had neutral backgrounds, but under Rubens’s influence he introduced props such as columns to enrich the setting. With consummate skill he rendered details of costume and decor. His portraits, always convincing as likenesses, show the models as calm and dignified. Their expressions are guarded rather than warm.

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Van Dyck was precocious. When only 18, he acted as family representative in a lawsuit; before he was 19, his father declared him legally of age. In February 1618 he was inscribed as master in the Antwerp guild. It is uncertain when he entered the studio of Rubens, but on July 17, 1620, a correspondent of Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, reported that “van Dyck is still staying with Rubens and his works begin to be appreciated as much as those of his master.” In March 1620 Rubens used the assistance of “van Dyck and some other disciples.” In view of van Dyck’s fully developed personal style in these years, however, it is probably more accurate to call him a collaborator of Rubens rather than his pupil.

Although the relationship between Rubens and van Dyck became strained after 1630, there is no evidence that Rubens tried to hamper the career of the young rival. He probably helped him with recommendations on his first trip to England (November 1620 to February 1621), where Rubens’s admirer, the earl of Arundel, was also van Dyck’s protector.

Career in Antwerp and Italy

Apparently unwilling to remain at the court of King James I despite an annual salary of £100, van Dyck returned to Antwerp and in October 1621 set out for Italy. There, too, Rubens’s recommendations paved his way. His first destination was Genoa, where he was immediately patronized by the same group of aristocratic families for whom Rubens had been active 14 years earlier.

Genoa remained van Dyck’s headquarters, but he is known to have visited Rome, Venice, Padua, Mantua, Milan, and Turin. In 1624 he visited Palermo, where he painted the Spanish viceroy Emanuel Philibert of Savoy. Although everywhere employed with commissions, van Dyck used the opportunity of his Italian years to study the works of the great Italian painters. A sketchbook in the British Museum testifies to his attraction to the Venetian masters, above all, Titian. He made many rapid sketches of their compositions, occasionally adding notes about colour and spontaneous words of praise. The few figural compositions of van Dyck’s years in Italy betray a trend toward colouristic and expressive refinement under the influence of the Venetian school. Recollections of Rubens and of Bolognese masters may be seen in his most accomplished religious work done in Italy, an altarpiece, the Madonna of the Rosary (1624–27). The Italian portraits, many in full length, stress grandeur and aristocratic refinement. Whereas in earlier portraits the sitters generally look at the beholder, now they often are turned away as if concerned with weightier matters. Some of his Genovese ladies, portrayed in glitter and silk, have a condescending look.

In July 1627 van Dyck was again in Antwerp, where he remained until 1632. The frequent absence of Rubens between 1626 and 1630 (when he was engaged in diplomatic service on foreign missions) may have induced many patrons to turn to van Dyck. He received numerous commissions for altarpieces and for portraits, which forced him to employ assistants. During this period van Dyck also began to make small monochrome portraits in oil and drawings in chalk of princes, soldiers, scholars, art patrons, and, especially, of fellow artists, with the view of having them engraved and published. At least 15 of these portraits were etched by van Dyck himself. The others were engraved. The series, popularly known as van Dyck’s Iconography, was first published in 1645–46.

The tendencies first manifested in works done in Italy carry over into the five years van Dyck now spent in Antwerp. He and his patrons appear to have realized that his talent was suited better to themes involving tender emotion than to themes of violent action. The happiest works of that period show the Virgin as the affectionate mother with the infant Jesus in her arms or as the Mater Dolorosa in lamentation scenes; equally appealing are pictures showing saints in religious transport. In memory of his father, van Dyck in 1629 painted the crucified Christ with St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena, one of his noblest works and a prime example of the spiritual intensity fostered by the Counter-Reformation. Some of van Dyck’s most-enchanting stories from mythology or fable were done during these years.

His manner of painting was now quite economical. The pigments were put on thinly, in delicate combinations of blue, gray, pink, ochre, and sienna. The emphasis is on mellowness, in colour and tone. Although he continued to give an almost sensuous appeal to textures, such as silk, hair, and human skin, his paintings became increasingly cool and artificial. In this period, bust- and half-length figures were again in the majority, as they had been during his first years in Antwerp. Among his models were many members of the great princely houses of Europe, but some of the finest pictures are of collectors and art patrons, as well as scholars, churchmen, and a great many Antwerp artists. To this group should be added portraits done during his visit to the Continent in 1634–35, among them one of the Abbé Scaglia (1634), the skillful diplomat, for whom van Dyck also painted one of his last religious pictures, The Lamentation of the Dead Christ (1635). In these portraits a new predilection for rhetorical poses is noticeable. With agile hands, some figures seem to address an audience, in keeping with a Baroque taste in portraiture.