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His Journey from Antwerp to Genoa and London.
Published by Hannibal books on the occasion of the exhibition Van Dyck, the European at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, from March 20 to July 19.
Anna Orlando & Katlijne Van der Stighelen.
A lack of evidence means art historians can only speculate about the relationship between Peter Paul Rubens and his most gifted pupil Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641).
But it’s a reasonable assumption that Rubens’ dominance in van Dyck’s native Antwerp made the younger painter realise it would be easier to make his reputation elsewhere.
The thesis underlies a major exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in the Italian city of Genoa, one of the European cities – that also included Palermo and London – where van Dyck, after leaving Antwerp, established himself as arguably the greatest portrait painter of his age, carrying out hundreds of commissions for aristocrats and royalty.
According to the accompanying book, the exhibition’s aim is to show Van Dyck was a painter who was European “in the fullest, most modern sense of the word: mobile, open-minded and able to cross geographical and cultural boundaries”.
We are made to appreciate how he transformed portraiture by adding dynamism and drama under the influence of the great Italian artists, notably Titian, whom he discovered on his travels.
Apprenticed from the age of 10, young even by the standards of the time, he painted with brilliance and passion up to his death at the age of 42, some would say from working too hard. As Austrian art critic Gustav Glück wrote, van Dyck displayed “a positively inhuman appetite for work”.
In addition to the hundreds of van Dyck portraits that remain, he was responsible for a work referred to as “the miracle” of Brussels – a group portrait of the Brussels City Council made up of 23 life-size portraits. It hung in Brussels Town Hall until it was destroyed by fire during the French bombardment of the city in1695.
Given the lack of surviving written material to provide insights into van Dyck’s character, what he painted is the biggest clue to his driven, ambitious personality.
In addition to being a painter, he was also an etcher/printer. His epic achievement in this medium was “the Iconography,” which reproduced likenesses of eighty of the most famous monarchs, military men, scholars, and artists of the time, including his own, helping to make the case that painters should be esteemed as highly as the people they portrayed.
The European backdrop to his achievements was crisis, giving art – then as now –increased significance as the means to make veiled political statements and to serve as a counterweight.
Van Dyck’s death was only a few years before England’s King Charles 1, one of his most celebrated patrons, was executed, while across the European continent religious divisions, inseparable from political ones, deepened. Combined with dynastic struggles, they led to war.
Van Dyck also lived through an outbreak of plague in Palermo. In their desperation, people prayed to the city’s patroness, the hermit Saint Rosalie, and the virulence of the disease prompted a search for her bones, which were found in a cave, causing a sensation.
Although not the first painter commissioned to paint Rosalie, van Dyck’s formula, in which she looks up beseechingly to the heavens, quickly became the reference model.
For those who credited Rosalie with releasing them from the plague, the importance of van Dyck’s Sicilian work could not be overstated, but for British art historian Karen Hearn, one of the erudite contributors to this meticulous, detailed, weighty book, his London legacy is truly profound.
Often claimed as a token Brit, van Dyck died in London, then Europe’s fastest-growing metropolis and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. His impact on creating artfully naturalistic portraits lives on, long after the rulings classes whose identity his artistry sought to affirm have lost much of their influence.
Van Dyck, The European.
His Journey from Antwerp to Genoa and London.
Published by Hannibal books on the occasion of the exhibition Van Dyck, the European at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, from March 20 to July 19.
Anna Orlando & Katlijne Van der Stighelen.
A lack of evidence means art historians can only speculate about the relationship between Peter Paul Rubens and his most gifted pupil Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641).
But it’s a reasonable assumption that Rubens’ dominance in van Dyck’s native Antwerp made the younger painter realise it would be easier to make his reputation elsewhere.
The thesis underlies a major exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in the Italian city of Genoa, one of the European cities – that also included Palermo and London – where van Dyck, after leaving Antwerp, established himself as arguably the greatest portrait painter of his age, carrying out hundreds of commissions for aristocrats and royalty.
According to the accompanying book, the exhibition’s aim is to show Van Dyck was a painter who was European “in the fullest, most modern sense of the word: mobile, open-minded and able to cross geographical and cultural boundaries”.
We are made to appreciate how he transformed portraiture by adding dynamism and drama under the influence of the great Italian artists, notably Titian, whom he discovered on his travels.
Apprenticed from the age of 10, young even by the standards of the time, he painted with brilliance and passion up to his death at the age of 42, some would say from working too hard. As Austrian art critic Gustav Glück wrote, van Dyck displayed “a positively inhuman appetite for work”.
In addition to the hundreds of van Dyck portraits that remain, he was responsible for a work referred to as “the miracle” of Brussels – a group portrait of the Brussels City Council made up of 23 life-size portraits. It hung in Brussels Town Hall until it was destroyed by fire during the French bombardment of the city in1695.
Given the lack of surviving written material to provide insights into van Dyck’s character, what he painted is the biggest clue to his driven, ambitious personality.
In addition to being a painter, he was also an etcher/printer. His epic achievement in this medium was “the Iconography,” which reproduced likenesses of eighty of the most famous monarchs, military men, scholars, and artists of the time, including his own, helping to make the case that painters should be esteemed as highly as the people they portrayed.
The European backdrop to his achievements was crisis, giving art – then as now –increased significance as the means to make veiled political statements and to serve as a counterweight.
Van Dyck’s death was only a few years before England’s King Charles 1, one of his most celebrated patrons, was executed, while across the European continent religious divisions, inseparable from political ones, deepened. Combined with dynastic struggles, they led to war.
Van Dyck also lived through an outbreak of plague in Palermo. In their desperation, people prayed to the city’s patroness, the hermit Saint Rosalie, and the virulence of the disease prompted a search for her bones, which were found in a cave, causing a sensation.
Although not the first painter commissioned to paint Rosalie, van Dyck’s formula, in which she looks up beseechingly to the heavens, quickly became the reference model.
For those who credited Rosalie with releasing them from the plague, the importance of van Dyck’s Sicilian work could not be overstated, but for British art historian Karen Hearn, one of the erudite contributors to this meticulous, detailed, weighty book, his London legacy is truly profound.
Often claimed as a token Brit, van Dyck died in London, then Europe’s fastest-growing metropolis and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. His impact on creating artfully naturalistic portraits lives on, long after the rulings classes whose identity his artistry sought to affirm have lost much of their influence.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, art, books, exhibitions, painting • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, books, exhibitions, painting