Art History Today

A Visit to Christchurch

Last Wednesday I took an excursion to Oxford to enjoy the galleries. I spent about 90 minutes in Christchurch Picture Gallery, which I haven’t visited for about a year.

The quad at Christchurch College, Oxford.

They make these Oxford colleges so impenetrable. Mind your manners dear boy, and don’t tread on the grass in the quad lest you incur the opprobrium of academe. I haven’t been for some time so I’d forgotten that there are different gates for the public, like the equivalent of second class stamps, second class on trains etc. However once you get through the checkpoints and into the gallery, you’ll find it’s well worth it. For the princely sum of £3, you’re admitted into a treasure chamber of early Italian renaissance and the baroque.

Christ Church Picture Gallery came into being when General John Guise left his collection of over 200 paintings and over 2,000 drawings to his old college. The drawings are the most renowned, and it must be amazing being a curator there. I’ve been in the print room a few times to look at Poussin and other seventeenth-century sheets. These days there’s so much distraction, crowds, noise, that it’s difficult to find a space for contemplating pictures and drawings, but I found it here as I was the only visitor to the gallery. The Oxford galleries are good for meditations on art as they’re not crowded, and they’re ideal for either concentrated looking or just drifting off into reverie in front of the pictures; though inevitably the art historian in my brain won’t stand for me daydreaming in front of pictures. He reminds me of all the lectures I’ve sat through, seminars I’ve conducted and books I’ve read, dredging it all up from the depths. Here are comments on two famous masterpieces by baroque artists at Christchurch. Blame the art historian in my head if it gets too pedantic.

Anthony Van Dyck, The Continence of Scipio, early 1620s.

Anthony van Dyck, The Continence of Scipio, Christchurch Picture Gallery, c. 1620-1, oil on canvas, 183 x 232.5 cm.

This is the story of Scipio Africanus, who after the siege of New Carthage in Hispania, returned a captured beautiful woman to her fiancé Allucius, along with the money offered by her parents to ransom her. What strikes you first about this painting are its colours. There’s the fluttering crimson cloak of Scipio, edged with gold, a truly regal ensemble.Allucius is dressed in a cool blue while the woman that Scipio is returning to him is dressed in a richly resplendent gold gown. The painter has gone for modesty in this woman and failed miserably; she seems too haughty to my eye.

Nicolas Poussin, The Continence of Scipio, Pushkin Museum, Moscow, c. 1640, oil on canvas, 114.5 x 163.5 cm.

I shouldn’t do this but if you compare her to the same character in Poussin’s version, the French artist shows a very demure young woman whose whole bearing is of graceful shyness, almost a Vestal Virgin. Van Dyck’s treatment is more baroque in the sense of theatricality, even verging on comedy with the parents of the young woman. Her mother is a Leonardoesque crone, with a grotesque smile, eager to reclaim the money that they were going to give Scipio. The old man’s head seems to be edging past his daughter’s which is jarring to the eye. The most fascinating detail for me is the father’s hand which seems to possess a life of its own; the fingers resemble tendrils rather than real digits. It was one of Van Dyck’s first court pictures in England, and you can see it’s a transitional work. He may have his own take on Venetian art, but he’s still using the language of Rubens, especially in the stocky man carrying the ornate receptacle; this figure conforms to Rubens’s Herculean type, derived from the Farnese Hercules. This is not so much a composition as an assemblage of motifs; Van Dyck was still learning his craft, but he was working to a specific brief. I seem to recall that this picture has lots of connections with the Arundel/Buckingham circle, so it’s steeped in allusive detail such as the gorgon-headed relief on the lower right (the viewer’s L)which is bound up with the rivalries and politics of the courtiers of James I, who might actually be represented in the figure of Scipio himself. That would explain the rolling English countryside beyond this “political epithalamium”, which is about as far from war torn New Carthage as you can get.

Annibale Carracci, The Butcher’s Shop, 1580s.

Annibale Carracci, The Butcher’s Shop, Christchurch Picture Gallery, 1580s oil on canvas, 185 x 266 cm.

Ah yes, one of the most famous paintings in the gallery. The colours are more muted here; they almost approach the monochromatic. Here we see 6 figures within a butcher’s shop in late-sixteenth-century Bologna, but I’m almost tempted to say 8 and count the two carcases which are large as the humans. There is meat in abundance here, a vegetarian’s nightmare. Unlike say Rembrandt’s Dead Ox, I don’t see anything heroic here, just the daily grisly business of cutting up meat, weighing it and preparing it for market. That last idea is conveyed by the smaller slices of meat in the box or tray at the rear; they almost seem as they’re being presented to the viewer for their inspection. This makes of the viewer a consumer rather than a connoisseur of realist, genre paintings which this is supposed to be. If we’re to believe certain Carracci scholars though, this is an elaborate allegory on the art theory of the Carracci academy. As Carl Goldstein remarks, most scholars have been reluctant to view this painting as “a glimpse into a butcher’s stall in sixteenth-century Bologna.” Some have seen it as an “allegorical puzzle, connected with the program of natural realism” drawn up in the Carracci studio. Far from the Christchurch picture being an example of naturalism, it has to be seen as artificial; why else does it have quotations from other celebrated works like Noah’s family in Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling as well as Raphael’s Sacrifice of Noah, itself borrowing from Michelangelo.

Annibale Carracci, A Man Weighing Meat, Royal Collection, Windsor, 1582-3, red chalk on beige paper.

The butcher on the left (viewer’s R) hanging a carcass with difficulty, supposedly comes from Michelangelo’s Crucifixion of St Peter, according to Goldstein. The same figure was also connected with the action of raising the cross, as well as handling the figure of Christ in the descent from the cross. Only one of the four butchers is unconnected with a renaissance source; this is the man in the white apron weighing meat, which Annibale studied and drew from a live model. In this drawing the features of the butcher are younger than the one in the final painting. It’s also interesting to see Annibale’s study of an arm on the same sheet, exactly as it would appear in the final version. The scales that have been studied carefully are actually stadera, on which the meat is hung in such a way that the counterweight (romano) running the length of the horizontal pole, registers the weight.

Does it contain hidden erudition, or is it just a slice of life (ha ha) recorded in downtown Bologna. According to a recent reading, the allegorical interpretation has been set aside- and the “Butcher’s Shop” is now seen as a realistic representation of the butcher’s trade in sixteenth-century Bologna. It’s funny how the pendulum of art history interpretation swings. For myself I always regarded it as genre, a window on the trades and professions of early modern Italy. There’s nothing “allegorical” about the joints of beef on the tray, though you really have to see the painting itself to see their resemblance to real meat. No reproductions can do justice to the beef, which when viewed in actuality, looks solid and good enough to eat.

37 Masters?

Following up on the report of the Rome heist recovery, here’s a article from that fount of art history knowledge- the Telegraph.

The paintings include Portrait of a Knight by Van Dyck, Christ on the Cross by Rubens and The Baptism of Christ by Nicolas Poussin, a 17th century French artist who spent most of his working life in Rome.

Lesser known works include an exquisite painting of the Madonna and Child by the 13th century artist Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, who came from Lucca in Tuscany, and a work by a student of Caravaggio.

Two of the masterpieces may have been painted by Rubens and El Greco, although the attributions are yet to be confirmed.

"Rarely does one recover such a large quantity of works of such artistic importance," said Rossella Vodret, an expert from the ministry of culture.

Five other art works, which were stolen at the same time, are still unaccounted “

In what universe were such badly executed and conceived canvases painted by Rubens and his student Van Dyck?  I’m starting to wonder if the press have mis-represented or mis-quoted Vodret- time will tell..

If anybody has come across a list of the 37 works, then I’d be interested to see it. Most of all I’d love to see a copy of the auction catalogue in which these paintings appeared as Poussin et al.

 

Studio in Self-Portrait, or Self-Portrait in Studio?

We’ll start with a question. How can a self-portrait be considered a representation of the studio? Well, usually in paintings of the artist in the studio, artistic implements are shown; such tools also appear in self-portraits. From the sixteenth-century onwards, artists tended to show themselves sitting or standing before an easel with the tools of their trade around them. Expect to see brushes- obviously!- palettes, drawings, jars, sculpture, other canvases- what was called last week the paraphernalia of painting. Given the smaller dimensions of self-portraits, not all these instruments can be shown; instead we usually see a reduced ensemble of brushes, palette, maulstick, and of course the support that the painter is working on.

 

When thinking about the problem of self-portraits and the artist’s studio it might help to use a concept used by Giles Waterfield in his essay on the studio- “self-framing.” From the 18th century onwards, artists in Britain began to show themselves looking at themselves through mirrors in their own studios. As Waterfield says , such mirroring apparatuses gave the artist the opportunity to show reflections that reflect the artist’s reflections on himself, (The Artist’s Studio, 13). This sub-genre can be traced back to Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait of 1524, painted just after he arrived in Rome. In this virtuosic and somewhat arrogant demonstration of painting, Parmigianino shows himself reflected in a convex mirror. Richard Brilliant has called this image a “tour-de force of contradictory illusion, self-deception, and abortive alienation”, (Portraiture, 157). And he goes on to say that in this instance the spectator is made to feel that in looking at the mirror image he is intruding into the apparently reciprocal relation between the artist and the mirror; the large hand might act as barrier between the viewer and studio space. As we shall see, the artist’s studio can invite or bar, depending on the whim and temperament of the artist him or herself.

A more famous example of the mirror occurs in Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait in which the artist may be shown deep in the mirror witnessing the wedding of the Arnolfini couple in the room. This mirror may have been the inspiration for another self-framing image: Mark Gertler’s Still Life with Self-Portrait of 1918. Here, the Bloomsbury Group artist shows himself painting in a mirror; the still-life he is representing stands below the mirror, and Gertler shows his studio reflected again in the bottle in the inanimate group. A curious feature here is the looming Japanese figure, which may not only betray Gertler’s interest in Oriental art but suggest his impending doom- he threw himself under a train several years later.

In the process of creating a self-portrait, an artist obviously makes use of the mirror; without it they cannot paint a self-image, unless they rely on memory, but that would lead to errors in representation. Of course we seldom see the mirror in the self-portrait because that is what the artist is looking into as they paint themselves. I say “seldom” because there are notable exceptions: we’ve seen the Gertler, but well before that there is  the Triple Portrait by the Flemish artist Johannes Gumpp, executed in 1646. In this extraordinary image, Gumpp shows himself no less than three times: in person, in his studio painting with his back to the spectator; in the mirror, with his gaze averted; and on the canvas, looking directly out at us. Here the distinction between the physical mirror in the studio and the “mirror” of the painting is made; the artist has to continually look into the former in order to realize the latter, on canvas, which might be seen as a moral “mirror” that reflects the virtue and skill of the painter. The difference between the two is also seen in relation to doing and seeing. Gumpp regards himself in the mirror, a purely optical strategy and uses his hands to paint the image he sees, a mechanical activity. The skill needed in perfecting the Self-Portrait is negotiation between hand and eye, which inevitably leaves a gap, a blind spot which is neither the painting on the easel nor the mirror. We could, at a pinch, even imagine ourselves in the place of the artist who seems to be looking out directly at the spectator, unlike the reflection in the mirror which looks to the side, although the artist’s back suggests barring- like Parmigianino’s hand- rather than admission into the studio. We could try another experiment if we don’t feel confident at imagining ourselves in the space of the painter- imagine another artist creating the self-image.

Actually we don’t have to envisage this situation as we have a ready-made example. The 16^th century painter Sofonisba Auguissola did a painting of another artist, her tutor, Bernardino Campi, painting her own image; so this is a self-image created via the mediation of another painter, who being her mentor, immediately raises questions about lineage, influence, and not forgetting gender as well. It is a striking image, and Sophisba may be perpetrating an elaborate joke, which is lost upon us.  As Germaine Greer has observed, the head of Campi is “subtly expressive, in her own best manner”, while Sophonisba’s features are blank and “moon-faced”, (The Obstacle Race, 181). Sofonisba shows herself as vague, un-idealised, sketchily conceived, and her master in fine detail, though it also her hand that has rendered this face. This is very amusing, although we’re not privy to the actual meaning of the joke. Or does Anguissola have a more serious intention? Is the female artist, probably under cultural pressure, playing down her ability as an artist in a self-deprecating way? Compare Sophonisba’s visual scherzo with this less schematic, less humorous self-image.

A second example of the mirror in self-portrait is provided by the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci who played with the vocabulary of the self-portrait by showing himself as a self-portrait in his own studio in a painting of 1604. Perched on an easel, Annibale’s framed self-image regards the spectator with his trade mark melancholia, while his palette hangs forlornly from his easel. A shadowy figure lurks by the window and a little dog stands nearby. The animal quotient was cut down in the final version; the sketch for it has a cat under the easel and a pack of dogs Annibale’s drawing is a highly complex meditation on the relationship between the self-portrait and the studio, underscored by the relationship between reality and illusion. In the top rectangle, a quick sketch for a conventional self-portrait is drawn, and in that an image is an oval mirror; this could be the artist’s own as he would have faced the mirror with his right shoulder towards it resulting in a reversed image as he worked. In the bottom rectangle, the self-portrait is placed within Annibale’s studio. This has a beamed ceiling, three dogs, one of which is barking at his master’s canvas- this is a witty way of suggesting the dog thinks it’s the real person, an update of Zeuxis fooling the animals in classical Greece. A cat cuddled up under the easel lends a note of domesticity and informality- no studio should be without one! The mysterious figure framed at the window may be the artist himself, peering into his studio, and in the process emphasising the dynamic between the real world and the realm of the studio, reality and artifice respectively. Finally, the bearded man to the right might relate to the clothes in the original self-portrait, which have been changed in the final version to convey less grandeur and more humility, not to say sadness, Annibale’s customary expression, according to his biographers. Many more ideas are contained in this fascinating drawing, which beats Gumpp into a cocked hat with its complexity.

Sophonisba’s unusual mediated self-portrait; Gumpp’s tripartite representation of himself; and Annibale’s complex configuration indicates what could be called the expanding repertoire of the self-portrait from the late 16^th century into the 17^th century. Conventions of self-representation were being challenged resulting in singular iconography that we’re seeing in these examples. But perhaps the most radical departure from the conventions of self-portraiture is Poussin’s contemporary, Artemisia Gentileschi, who was in contact with one of his patrons. In her Self-Portrait, aka Self-Portrait as Allegory of Painting, Artemisia shows herself painting at her canvas, seen from the side. This in itself is evidence of her science and skill since it would have required two mirrors to capture this oblique figure. More significantly, she shows herself as Pittura, the female personification of painting.  Conforming to Ripa’s prescription for Pittura- with the odd change such as omitting the blindfold symbolising the muteness of painting, though she retains the mask of imitatio, worn on a necklace- Artemisia is clothed in the cangiante gown showing a characteristic of the art. In showing herself as Pittura, Artemisia avoids the masculine tradition in which Pittura is shown as a female muse to the male painter who is inspired by her to paint.

One of the most famous examples of this is the beautiful woman in a canvas in Poussin’s Self-Portrait of 1649-50. She too wears colourful cangiante garments, but Poussin has made some modifications. She is held by an invisible figure- the painter himself, perhaps?- and has an eye in her diadem. This has been interpreted as optical perspective, or what Poussin called “prospect”, a clear way of seeing necessary to the painter’s art. Though Artemisia’s self-portrait lacks such intellectual qualities as Poussin’s, it is a remarkable pictorial essay on the role of the female painter fighting to carve out a career and artistic reputation in a predominantly masculine world. Gentileschi scholars suggest, rightly I think, that it was probably painted in 1638 when Artemisia was working with her father at the court of Charles I in England. As some have speculated, Artemisia may have seen Van Dyck’s renowned Self-Portrait with Sunflower- the latter a symbol for the king- and resolved to have created an equally memorable self-image. There is no doubt that she did that, and revolutionised the genre of the self-portrait in the process.

A Brief Sketch of Painting in Baroque Naples

Apologies for the scarcity of posts of late. No time to blog because of writing lectures, conference papers, proof-reading, administration and teaching. To make up for it, here's a brief survey of baroque painting in Naples taken from my lecture notes and the writings of various seicento scholars.

 Pre- Baroque phase.  

 No native school of painting in existence before the 17^th century. However, Vasari visited Naples in 1544 and patrons in Naples looked outside to recruit early renaissance artists like Cavallino, Giotto and Colantonio (pupil of Antonello di Messina). High Renaissance paintings by Titian (Annunciation) and Raphael (Madonna of the Fish) in Naples- below. Interest in Flemish artists by Neapolitan painters in mid 16^th century. Paul Bril, a Flemish landscape artist, painted in Naples, in 1602. His views of bosky groves may have inspired Salvator Rosa, a native.

 

First Caravaggio-esque phase.

 Neapolitan Baroque painting starts here, 1606-7, the year Caravaggio swept through the city. Three significant altarpieces: The Flagellation, Seven Acts of Mercy- below- and the Crucifixion of St Andrew. Caravaggio's influence on local paintings probably dates from 1608; also, Louis Finson, a Fleming, stayed in Naples until 1612 painting copies after Caravaggio. Caracciolo painted religious pictures on a small scale and worked for some of Caravaggio's patrons; his Salome owes much to Caravaggio's version (London).



Spanish artist Jusepe Ribera (Spagnoletto) moved from Rome to Naples in 1616. Though familiar with Caravaggio's Roman manner, he did not start signing his pictures until the 1620s when he was confident he had assimilated Caravaggio's style into his Neapolitan painting. Ribera's Drunken Silenus (Naples) – below- is an interesting blend of Caravaggio, Rubens and the prints of the Carracci. Flemish art does slightly influence Ribera in his later period: the flamboyant drapery in Apollo and Marsyas is reminiscent of Van Dyck, whose paintings were in the Antwerp merchant Gaspar Roomer's collection. Ribera lived and worked in Naples for the rest of his life. 

Move towards Bolognese Classicism.  

From Rome came the French painter Simon Vouet, who is likely to have visited Naples about 1620. Two of his pictures have been connected with Neapolitan clients: the Circumcision- below- and St Bruno being given the Rule. Though these two paintings, especially the Circumcision, show Caravaggio's influence, they also demonstrate knowledge of the lighter palette of Lanfranco and Bolognese classicism. It was this stylistic détente that served Vouet as he moved towards a more international style.  

 
One of the greatest exponents of Bolognese classicism was Guido Reni. While in Naples on his second visit during 1621-2, he painted the delicate and naturalised Meeting of Christ and St John which had an influence on painting in the city. Artemesia Gentileschi was one of the painters who began to outgrow her Caravaggism in favour of a more classical painting. She probably arrived in Naples about 1629-30. A formidable lady, she seems to have actively engaged with other painters rather than producing works in isolation for sale outside Naples, although she did that too. Her Annunciation (Naples) mixes Caravaggio's chiaroscuro and Vouet's colour quite effectively while the figures in her Corisca and the Satyr- below- betrays the influence of Reni. Mention should also be made of Stanzione, ' the so-called Guido Reni of Naples'. His Massacre of the Innocents conflates the grotesque horror of Ribera with Reni's version of the Massacre (Bologna). Poussin's Massacre (Chantilly) seems another point of reference.  

 

Neo-Venetianism and the High Baroque in Naples.

From the 1630s there is marked movement away from solid forms towards a more painterly art, more Venetian in look. The realism of Ribera and the classicism of Stanzione was exchanged for a wave of painting that could be called neo-Venetian, but this new painterliness was not a reaction against previous art- it expressed the wish to paint more broadly. In addition, there was the influence of the pictures of Rubens and Van Dyck, whose Feast of Herod (Edinburgh) – below- and Susannah and the Elders (Munich) were in the collection of Gaspar Roomer. Also, works by Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco had arrived in Naples while Neapolitan artists went to Rome and studied ceiling paintings there. It is true to say that Naples did not experience a "crisis of painterliness' as Rome, since naturalism and classicism remained with the new style in Naples. It was only after 1656- the year of the plague- with the work of artists like Preti and Giordano that painting in Naples began to catch up with the high baroque in Rome.

Key dates.  

1606-7- Caravaggio in Naples.

1610- Death of Caravaggio at Porto Ercole.

1612- Finson leaves Naples for Antwerp.

1615- Salvator Rosa born

1616- Arrival of Ribera from Rome.

1620- Possible visit of Vouet.

1621-2- Reni's second visit.

1629-30- Arrival of Artemesia Gentileschi.

1630- Arrival of Domenichino from Rome; Velasquez in Naples.

1631- Eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

1633- Arrival of Lanfranco in Naples.

1634- Gaspar Roomer's gallery established; birth of Giordano.

1635- Death of Caracciolo.

1640- Rubens's 'Feast of Herod' enters Roomer's collection.

1641- Death of Domenichino in Naples.

1647- Revolt of Masaniello.

1652- Death of Ribera.

1656- Plague breaks out; Preti arrives; Stanzione dies.

1674- Death of Gaspar Roomer.

 

 

Painters, Thieves and Plagues.

According to Van Dyck's Italian sketchbook, in Palermo he encountered one Don Fabrizio Valguarnera, a nobleman with a Catalan pedigree dating back to the 14^th century. Though he had been born into a noble family and raised as a gentleman, Don Fabrizio did not have enough money to keep himself in the style he wanted. He tried to solve his relative poverty by attempting to obtain a position as a physician at the Spanish court, but was unsuccessful. He had great success, however, operating as an art dealer, orchestrating dodgy deals with paintings, and especially jewels. These were eventually to lead to his downfall because he engaged a thief in Madrid to steal a shipment of diamonds from traders in that city. His friend fled to France, but the impassive Don Fabrizio thought himself above suspicion, that is until the merchants he had stolen from tried several attempts on his life. Don Fabrizio took the hint and made his way via France to Rome where he sought out the studios of famous painters, his aim being to use the proceeds of the robbery to buy paintings from celebrated artists like Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. A strange aspect of this journey was Valguarnera's decision to murder his accomplice and take the diamonds, but he was swayed from this drastic cause by the appearance of the image of the Virgin Mary in a dream forbidding him to commit murder. What a typical baroque blend of religiosity, violence and art crime. In Rome Valguarnera's past caught up with him. Three merchants from Spain came to Rome and exposed his nefarious activities to the authorities; this resulted in his arrest and a celebrated trial featuring, of all people Poussin, whose Plague of Ashdod, had been sold to the aristocrat for 110 scudi. As Poussin told the court he would not accept diamonds as payment, but waited for real currency. Wise man!

The exact nature of Valguarnera's activities in Palermo are not known, but he seems to have asked Italian and Flemish painters there to make copies of Old Testament stories, presumably for illegal reasons. He may have commissioned copies from Van Dyck although the young artist would have been preoccupied with his greatest painting in Italy: another plague painting showing St Rosalia whose remains were discovered on Monte Pellegrino during Van Dyck's visit to Palermo in 1624. This altarpiece- not widely known outside specialist circles- was based on Rubens's altarpieces from his Italian period. In May of that year the plague broke out which eventually was to kill Van Dyck's benefactor, Emmanuel Filiberto, Viceroy of Savoy, whose magnificent portrait the artist painted a few months before the patron died. Fearing for his own life, Van Dyck lost no time in escaping the plague by returning to Genoa until news of his sister's death brought him back to Antwerp in 1627.

As for Valguarnera, again he thought his aristocratic bearing coupled with hard lies would get him acquitted. Not so: the evidence mounted against him and he died in a Roman prison in 1631 with "no marks on his body." Despite Valguarnera's immorality, Poussin scholars will always be grateful to him because the proceedings of his trial reveal important information about art in Rome. Now if only Valguarnera could have given us a description of Poussin's workshop, which he must have visited during 1630-1.  

 

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Van Dyck and Rubens

The current debate about the two, almost identical, works by Anthony van Dyck is fortuitous; it comes exactly at the time when I'm teaching classes on the Northern baroque, specifically in 17th century Antwerp. So, I'm able to combine work with a blog post, and it's high time I did another post.

The Rotterdam panel was once owned by Rubens, which implies that Van Dyck modified Ruben's design to fit his own ideas. Questions of connoisseurship and attribution aside, the panels invite speculation on the relationship between two of the greatest artists that the 17th century produced.

Anthony van Dyck probably first met Rubens in 1615, the year that Rubens supposedly painted a portrait of the younger artist. If it is by Rubens, the portrait seems an attempt to check the stylistic exuberance demonstrated in Van Dyck's memorable Self-Portrait of 1613-14. In that striking image, Van Dyck looks back over his shoulder at the spectator; the effect is ambivalent, half innocence and half calculation, the latter borne out by his stare which is unflinching for such an apprentice. For apprenticed he was- not to Rubens, but to the mediocre Hendrik van Balen- a situation to be improved when Van Dyck officially became a pupil of Rubens in 1617. Rubens himself never took on young pupils preferring elder, accomplished artists, his reason being that younger painters should train with another master before entering his workshop. Perhaps this controlling tendency lies behind his portrait of Van Dyck, which whilist retaining something of the "romanticism" of Van Dyck's own, re-models his image. Gone are the tendrils of hair falling down over the younger artist's forehead; instead they are eclipsed by the shadow above the eyes.

Although Van Dyck seems to have joined Rubens's workshop around 1616-17, the employment situation was far from simple. The younger artist may have kept his own workshop, whilist also working in Rubens's, an odd, and illegal state of affairs since Van Dyck was going against the rules of the Antwerp Guild. Rubens seems to have turned a blind eye to this, not out of affection for his problematic pupil, but because Van Dyck was the greatest painter, after the master, in the entire workshop. Yet the two semi-identical panels suggest a dynamic between the two studios. The Stockholm panel is thought to be a copy, possibly based on the Rotterdam version which may have been used as a model. But did the Rotterdam version- owned by Rubens- come from his studio initially, or were the two panels conceived by Van Dyck in his own studio?  

That- and other connoisseurship issues- may be resolved by the large Van Dyck exhibition being planned for the Prado in 2012, but the relationship between Rubens and Van Dyck still fascinates with its narrative of intergenerational tensions, multiple studio operations and competitive rivalry. Consulting a catalogue of the Van Dyke exhibition of 1999, I find mention of even possible envy on Rubens's part towards a genius 22 years his junior, rapidly catching up with the elder artist, even surpassing him in one genre- portraiture. According to this source, it was the 17th century critic and biographer Bellori, who said that Rubens would only cede to Van Dyck in the field of portraiture, and no other. This may be why portraiture is emphasized in the allegorical headpiece to Bellori's Life of Anthony van Dyck. This figure- a woman holding up a mirror whilst trampling the ape of nature- representing "Judicious Imitation" explains why – as Claire Pace and Janice Bell explain in a wonderful essay on Bellori's allegories- Van Dyck whilist tied to his model as a portraitist, nevertheless was selective and judicious enough to supplant its limitations and put portraits on a level almost with history painting.

So much for Van Dyck in the abstract, but his early life in Antwerp was firmly down to earth with family squabbles, bankruptcy and acrimonious law suits. Van Dyck's genius was born of painful necessity, which takes the shine off the myth of the aristocratic artist fashioning courtly pictures for jaded and decadent elites. Van Dyck's financial embarrassment and its consequences may well have instilled in him that competitive and determined nature that gave him the confidence to go up against one of the greatest of baroque masters.