VAN DYCK'S SOLDIER/ARISTOCRAT

Portrait of an Italian Nobleman

VAN DYCK’S SOLDIER/ARISTOCRAT

by Joan K. Yanni

The life-sized figure in black armor, gazing confidently out of the canvas, demands our attention, prominent even in the elegant Fountain Court.  The subject of Anthony Van Dyke’s Portrait of an Italian Nobleman (68.100) is a handsome man of perhaps early middle age, shown three-quarter length. His eyes are alive and glistening as he calmly looks at the viewer. Around his neck and wrists are lace collar and cuffs. His left hand rests on the pommel of his sword, a testament to both his nobility and his military calling. Though the background of the portrait is very dark, if the viewer looks closely he can see that the man’s right arm is akimbo, the lace of the cuff showing his hand bent at the wrist and resting against his hip. A close look at the top right of the painting will reveal solid stone masonry, which reinforces the stability of the central figure.

Though the man is calm, the picture is far from static. The face glows, almost breathing.  A fashionable upturned mustache adds dash and vigor to the countenance while a jeweled ring on the left hand glints on the tapered fingers. A lightning-like flash sets off the polished armor. The identity of the sitter is not known, but Van Dyck has created a recognizable type: a refined aristocrat as well as an officer, a man prepared for bloody military engagement if necessary. The portrait is a combination of idealism and realism.

In the seventeenth century Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) was ranked as the greatest portrait painter not only in all of Flanders and Italy, but in England as well.  He was born in 1599 to a prosperous silk merchant in Antwerp, Belgium.  His talent emerged early and he learned his craft as an apprentice to Hendrick van Balen.  At sixteen he was functioning as an independent artist and living in his own house with Jan Bruegel; he was accepted as a master in Antwerp’s  Guild of St. Luke in 1618. The same year he began a fruitful collaboration                                                                                                                                                                             with Peter Paul Rubens, whose compositional innovations and graphic style deeply influenced the younger artist.  It is believed that while he was with Rubens he made copies for engravers and collaborated in the decoration for the Church of the Jesuits.

After a brief visit to England he went to Italy where he particularly admired the work of Titian and Tintoretto and began to use vibrant colors. In Italy he settled in Genoa, where his reputation grew, as did the demand       for his portraits. The works of this period are notable for the opulence of their backgrounds and decorative details as well as the vividness and richness of their colors and textures.

In 1627 Van Dyck returned to Antwerp where he was in great demand as a portrait painter.  In 1630 he was appointed court painter to the Infanta Isabella, Spanish regent of the Netherlands. His portraits began to show less of the strong, dark colors representative of his                                              

Italian period and to exhibit a greater delicacy and airiness in the use of cooler tones. The portraits of the Infanta, of Maria de Medici, mother of King Louis XIII of France, and of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange-Nassau, and his wife and son date from this period.

In 1632, at the invitation of King Charles I of England, Van Dyck settled in London as painter to the royal

household. Here he was knighted and given a pension. The many portraits of the king, Queen Henrietta Maria, their children, and members of the English court painted at this time were executed in part by the painter’s students, working from Van Dyck’s preliminary sketches.

Van Dyck returned to Antwerp in 1634 to have his official title of court painter renewed  by the Spanish governor of the Netherlands. He remained in his native city for almost two years and in 1635 was made honorary president of the painters’guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp. Returning to England in 1635 he remained there for the rest of his life, except for a brief visit to the Continent shortly before he died, and continued to paint portraits of the English royal family and other contemporary notables.

Van Dyck cannot be said to have founded an independent school, but he raised aristocratic portrait painting to its greatest height, exerting a strong influence upon later English painters, particularly such great portraitists of the 18^th century as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.  He also excelled in the field of engraving and was among the first to explore portrait etching. He planned a series of one hundred portrait etchings, known as the Iconography, of famous contemporary writers, poets and artists. Eighteen of these portraits he etched himself; the remainder was engraved after his designs.

Van Dyck’s success as a portrait painter was the result of more than simple virtuosity.  All of his portraits reflect acute sensitivity and understanding of his sitters and an innate appreciation of the aristocratic image they sought to project.