Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
Biography (Source: National Gallery of Art, London)
Born in Antwerp on March 22, 1599, Anthony van Dyck was the 7th of 12 children born to Frans van Dyck, a wealthy silk merchant, and Maria Cuypers, renowned for her embroidery skills. When he was ten years old, his parents apprenticed the precocious youth to Hendrik van Balen, a painter of small cabinet pictures and dean of the city's Saint Luke's Guild. Although the length of Van Dyck's stay with Van Balen is not known, it probably lasted three to four years.
Van Dyck registered as a master in the Antwerp Saint Luke's Guild in 1618, by which time he was already in demand as a portrait painter. However, by 1615-1616, Van Dyck had established his own workshop, with his even younger friend Jan Brueghel the Younger. The fact that the young artist was allowed to work independently before actually joining the guild may indicate that he enjoyed the protection of Peter Paul Rubens, whose contacts with the court in Brussels enabled him to obtain special favors for some of his protégés.
Biography (Source: National Gallery of Art, London)
During the late 1610s Van Dyck not only created his own independent religious and mythological scenes but was also active as Rubens' most important assistant. He helped the master with a number of large commissions, including the designs for the Decius Mus tapestry series and the ceiling decorations for the Church of Saint Charles Borromeo.
By 1620, one admirer wrote that Van Dyck's "work is almost as highly appreciated as Rubens.'"
Sometime between July and November 1620, Van Dyck went to England and apparently entered the service of King James I. He also produced at least one picture for each of the two chief patrons of the arts in Jacobean England: Portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel and Continence of Scipio executed for George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.
By the end of February 1621, Van Dyck was back in Antwerp, where he remained for eight months before leaving for Italy.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
Just before his departure, Van Dyck presented Rubens with three large paintings, including a portrait of his mentor's wife, Isabella Brant. Van Dyck arrived in Genoa, his first Italian port of call, on November 20, 1621.
The following year he spent eight months in Rome and also made short visits to Florence, Bologna, Venice, Padua, Mantua, and Milan before returning to Genoa at the end of 1622. There he encountered the majestic portraits Rubens had painted when he was in Genoa in 1606, among them Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria; these paintings were to inspire Van Dyck in his own work.
Van Dyck spent most of 1623 in Genoa, although he was in Rome between March and October of that year. During the spring and summer of 1624 he worked in Palermo. When an outbreak of the plague forced him to flee, he left behind an unfinished altarpiece, the Madonna of the Rosary, which was sent after him to be completed in Genoa.
Except for a purported trip to Marseilles and Aix-en-Provence in 1625, Van Dyck remained in Genoa until his return to Antwerp in 1627.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
An informative document of Van Dyck's Italian sojourn is the so-called Italian Sketchbook, now at the British Museum, in which he recorded drawings from life and copies after many works of art, primarily by Titian that he saw and admired on his travels.
Indeed, not only was Van Dyck profoundly influenced by the style of this Venetian master, but inventories also reveal that he later owned no fewer than 19 paintings by Titian, as well as his own copies of several others.
After his return to Antwerp, Van Dyck was extremely productive, both as a portraitist and a history painter. His portraits were sought after by Antwerp burghers and princely patrons, including Archduchess Isabella, governess of the Spanish Netherlands, and Queen Mother Maria de' Medici of France.
Van Dyck received many commissions for large altarpieces, including two that he painted for the Jesuit Confraternity of Bachelors in Antwerp, a lay brotherhood that he had joined in 1628.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
In the late 1620s Van Dyck began an extensive project known as the Iconography, a series of etchings and engravings of famous princes, aristocrats, and artists that would be published after his death. Aside from his own achievements, Van Dyck's rising artistic and social status was helped by Rubens' absence from Antwerp during the late 1620s. In 1630 the archduchess named Van Dyck court painter.
Van Dyck, however, did not remain long in Antwerp. In the winter of 1631-1632 he traveled to The Hague, where he worked for both the prince of Orange, Frederik Hendrik, and for Frederick V of the Palatinate and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart, the so-called Winter King and Winter Queen.
More significantly, that spring Van Dyck moved to London, where, in July 1632, he was knighted and named court painter to King Charles I and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, and provided with a generous yearly stipend. His numerous portraits of the king and queen as well as of members of their court have profoundly influenced history's perception of the aristocratic character of Charles I's reign.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
In 1634, Van Dyck left the English court and returned to Antwerp and Brussels, for reasons unknown, perhaps family. He may also have hoped that changing political circumstances after the death of Archduchess Isabella in 1633 would enhance his artistic prestige.
Nevertheless, Van Dyck returned to England after little more than a year, even though he had purchased a large country estate in 1634, was made honorary dean of the Antwerp Saint Luke's Guild, and produced an imposing group of portraits of aristocrats, scholars, and nobles. Between 1635 and 1640, Van Dyck and his extensive workshop continued to execute portraits and mythological paintings for the English court.
In February 1639 he married Mary Ruthven, a noble lady-in-waiting to the queen. A few months after Rubens' death in May 1640, Van Dyck returned once again to Antwerp, seemingly, at last, the undisputed head of the Flemish School.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
However, upon arrival, he was asked by Cardinal Infante Ferdinand to complete a set of four pictures for the king of Spain that Rubens had left unfinished. Van Dyck refused to accept this project but indicated that he would be willing to undertake a new commission. Apparently rebuffed, he soon left for Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the commission for the decoration of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre.
By May 1641 Van Dyck was back in London, but he was unwell and continued working only with difficulty. Moreover, the political turmoil that had erupted in England had already unsettled the lives of many of the aristocratic patrons on whom he relied.
In November, Van Dyck returned to Paris, where Queen Henrietta Maria had taken refuge with her brother, King Louis XIII. Seriously ill, the artist returned shortly thereafter to England, where on December 1 his wife gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Justiniana.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
Three days later Van Dyck made his will, and on December 9, 1641 he died. He was buried on December 11 in the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, where his tomb perished in the Great Fire of 1666.
With the exception of Holbein, van Dyck and his contemporary Velázquez were the first painters of pre-eminent talent to work mainly as court portraitists, revolutionising the genre. He is best known for his portraits of the aristocracy, most notably Charles I, and his family and associates.
Van Dyck became the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. He also painted mythological and biblical subjects, including altarpieces, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.
His influence extends into the modern period. The Van Dyke beard is named after him. During his lifetime, Charles I granted him a knighthood, and his burial in St Paul's Cathedral indicates his standing at the time of his death.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
Van Dyck's success meant he led a large workshop in London, "virtually a production line for portraits." According to a visitor, he usually made a drawing on paper which was then enlarged onto canvas by an assistant; he then painted the head himself. The costume in which the client wished to be painted was left at the studio and often with the unfinished canvas sent out to artists specialised in rendering such clothing. In his last years these studio collaborations accounted for some decline in the quality of work.
In addition many copies untouched by him, or virtually so, were produced by the workshop, as well as by professional copyists and later painters. The number of paintings ascribed to him had by the 19th century become huge, as with Rembrandt, Titian and others.
However, most of his assistants and copyists could not approach the refinement of his manner, so consensus among art historians on attributions to him is usually relatively easy to reach, and museum labelling is now mostly updated.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish, 1599 - 1641
The relatively few assistants that are known are Dutch or Flemish. He probably preferred to use trained Flemish artists because no equivalent English training existed in this period.
Van Dyck's enormous influence on English art does not come from a tradition handed down through his pupils; in fact, it is not possible to document a connection to his studio for any significant English painter.
Nazi-looted art
In 2017, Van Dyke's Portrait of Adriaen Hendriksz Moens, a looted artwork acquired by the Nazi Hermann Göring, was restituted to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker.
After WWII the Monuments Men returned the portrait to the Netherlands which was supposed to return it to the surviving Jewish family. Instead, they sold it to an art dealer in London who sold it to the Nazi food processing millionaire and former Nazi party member Rudolf August Oetker. Oekter's heirs restituted the painting to Goudstikkers heirs.
Portrait
Description of the painting, p. 246 Kindle
"It was a three-quarter-length portrait of a woman wearing a gown of gold silk trimmed in white lace. Isabella, who had studied art history before devoting her life to horses, recognized the style as Van Dyck’s. The woman’s face was not yet complete, only her hair, which was almost black. Lampblack, thought Isabella, with a magnificent sheen of lead white with touches of lapis lazuli and vermilion."
Author's Note:
Portrait of an Unknown Woman is a work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Aelbert Cuyp, 1620 - 1691
Cuyp was the great interpreter of Dutch landscape in the Italianate manner. Early landscapes like A River Scene with Distant Windmills are influenced by van Goyen, some of whose paintings show Dordrecht, Cuyp's home town.
The work of Utrecht painters, especially Jan Both, who returned from Italy about 1641, helped to turn Cuyp's interest towards large-scale landscapes in the Italianate manner.
Cuyp was the son of the Dordrecht portrait and animal painter, Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp. His occasional portraits, like the Portrait of Cornelis van Someren in the Collection, reflect his training with his father.
Though based in Dordrecht throughout his life, Cuyp travelled widely in Holland, making drawings. In 1658 he married a wealthy widow and appears to have painted little thereafter.
Danae and the Shower of Gold
Sold by Sotheby's for 80 to 120 thousand dollars. Their description:
This grand Danaë takes as its departure point Titian’s famous original, datable to 1544, painted for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese during the artist's brief and only visit to Rome in 1544-5. It remained in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome, until the mid 17th century and is now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.
Titian later revisited the subject. The Danaë in the Wellington collection at Apsley House is now considered to be the version painted by Titian for Philip II circa 1549–53, as the first in his great set of six mythological paintings, while the celebrated picture of the same subject at the Prado, now dated 1565, was acquired in Italy by Velázquez, entering the Spanish Royal Collection in 1634.
With these two groundbreaking canvases, Titian ushered in a taste for sensuous female nudes that encapsulated the Venetian tradition for warm color, soft contours, and dynamic paint application.
It comes as little surprise then that this particular composition found great demand on the open market, and numerous sixteenth century versions or variants executed by the Titian workshop and his immediate circle are recorded. The present example is a particularly impressive example, which in this case follows most closely the Naples original, while omitting Cupid.
Salvatore Mundi
Salvator Mundi is a painting attributed in whole or in part to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1499–1510.
Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in a major exhibition of Leonardo's work at the National Gallery, London, in 2011–2012.
Christie's claimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other leading specialists, some of whom propose that he only contributed certain elements; and others who believe that the extensive damage prevents a definitive attribution.
NOTE: It's in the Louvre Dubai, but not on display.
Interview with Daniel Silva—SALT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrEKJSuGOLw&t=251s
Noah Charney, on The Art of Forgery—NPR on WHYY
Van Dyke—National Gallery, London
Van Dyck was the most important Flemish painter of the 17th century after Rubens, whose works influenced the young Van Dyck. He also studied and was profoundly influenced by the work of Italian artists, above all, Titian.
Van Dyck was an extremely successful portraitist and painter of religious and mythological pictures in Antwerp and Italy. He was also an accomplished draughtsman and etcher. However, he is now best remembered for his elegant representations of Charles I and his court.
Van Dyck, born in Antwerp, was a precocious artist; his first independent works date from 1615-16, when he would have been about 17. In 1621 he was in the service of James I of England, but left to visit Italy, where he remained until 1627. His aristocratic rendering of Genoese patricians, like the so-called 'Balbi Children', were very well received in that city. After a second period in the Netherlands, greater success awaited Van Dyck when he settled at the English court in 1632. His authoritative and flattering representations of Charles I and his family set a new standard for English portraiture to which members of the court were keen to aspire.
Art theft and fraud
Art News—fake old classics
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/old-master-fakes-scandal-heating-up-683267
CNN
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/wolfgang-helen-beltracchi-forgers/index.html
Gallery France
https://www.galleryfrance.com/blog/moriarty-of-the-old-master-pulls-off-the-art-crime-of-the-century