The Story
Sir Anthony van Dyck (; Dutch: Antoon van Dyck [ˈɑntoːɱ‿vɑn ˈdɛik]; 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy. The seventh child of Frans van Dyck, a wealthy silk merchant in Antwerp, Anthony painted from an early age. He was successful as an independent painter in his late teens and became a master in the Antwerp Guild on 18 October 1617.
By this time, he was working in the studio of the leading northern painter of the day, Peter Paul Rubens, who became a major influence on his work. Van Dyck worked in London for some months in 1621, then returned to Flanders for a brief time, before travelling to Italy, where he stayed until 1627, mostly in Genoa. In the late 1620s he completed his greatly admired Iconography series of portrait etchings of mainly other artists and other famous contemporaries.
Executed in oil on canvas, measuring Framed: 266.5 x 184 x 12 cm (104 15/16 x 72 7/16 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 217.8 x 146 cm (85 3/4 x 57 1/2 in.), the surface rewards close looking. Anthony van Dyck builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Baroque practice.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
