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The Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck extended his preoccupation with portraiture into the printed medium by designing a body of portrait prints, posthumously compiled into a book entitled, the Iconography. This suite of images, organized and designed by Van Dyck and printed by workshop assistants between 1632 and 1644, is comprised of engraved and etched half-length portraits of contemporary European men and women of various professions and backgrounds, including artists, scholars, diplomats, and religious leaders. This thesis examines the artistic and literary context for Van Dyck’s Iconography, with a focus on the changing social and intellectual status of artists in northern Europe during the seventeenth century. It seeks to provide the scholarship on the Iconography with an understanding of how the portraits function as a collective group that enhanced the prestige of artists in the seventeenth century.

Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--München--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 1992. / Bibliogr. p. 178-190.

This dissertation offers a new interpretation of Anthony van Dyck’s art and career, taking as its point of departure a body of contemporary anecdotes, poems, and art theoretical texts that all responded to Van Dyck’s portrait sittings. It makes a decisive break with previous scholarship that explained Van Dyck’s focus on portraiture in terms of an intellectual deficit or a pathological fixation on status. Instead, I argue that throughout his career, Van Dyck consciously made the interaction between painter and sitter a central theme of his art. Offering an alternate account of Van Dyck’s relationship to Rubens as a young painter, the opening chapter examines Van Dyck’s initial decision to place portraiture at the heart of his production. I trace that decision to Van Dyck’s work on a series of history paintings that depict the binding of St. Sebastian, interpreted here as a programmatic statement on the part of a young artist with a deep commitment to life study and little interest in an emerging hierarchy of genres that deprecated portraiture. The second chapter surveys the portrait copies of both Rubens and Van Dyck, demonstrating that imitative and historicist investigations link their approaches to portraiture. Van Dyck drew upon his copies of Titian and Raphael in paintings such as his epochal portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, which awakened an ambivalent response on the part of Italian artists and critics. But Van Dyck’s practice of imitation also extended to his comportment and self-presentation in public, as exemplified by his emulation of Sofonisba Anguissola. A discussion of Van Dyck’s encounter with Anguissola leads to the contention that Van Dyck saw himself as participating in an alternate genealogy of art that placed court portraiture at the heart of an ambitious career and offered a rare opening to female practitioners. Van Dyck’s reception by one such painter, the English portraitist Mary Beale, provides a Leitmotiv throughout the dissertation. The third chapter situates Rubens’s and Van Dyck’s contrasting approaches to female portraiture within a larger shift in the status of portraits of women in the early seventeenth century, as embodied by the pan-European phenomenon of the “Gallery of Beauties.” This chapter also offers readings of the two artists’ contrasting depictions of Maria de’ Medici, who visited both of their homes during her exile in the Southern Netherlands. Such visits to Van Dyck’s studio provide the subject of the fourth and final chapter, which reexamines early biographers’ accounts of Van Dyck’s sittings and surveys his legacy for English painting and art theory over the course of the long seventeenth century. Whereas in their own writings, artists emphasized the opportunities for courtly self-assertion afforded by the sitting, poets and playwrights were more likely to depict sittings as threats to the sexual and moral order. Both attitudes represent important aspects of Van Dyck’s critical reception. The conclusion looks ahead to the tenacious hold of the portrait sitting on modern imaginings of the studio. Examining the portrait practices of such artists as Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, and Alice Neel, the conclusion reveals the persistence of a fascination with the sitting that had its origin with Van Dyck.

Anthony van Dyck's contemporary vision of sovereignty and knighthood made him the principal image-maker in England during the 1630s. His portraits of Charles I exemplified the Arcadian realm and philosophies held at court, as well as complying with the artistic and historical traditions of English painting. As a celebration of Monarchy by Divine Right, Van Dyck's portrayals of the Sovereign summarize the philosophical concepts of knighthood expressed in the Platonic Love theory and the Order of the Garter. Charles I was Defensor Fides, Pater Patriae, the suitor to his lady, and the courtly gentleman--all roles of the knight. Beyond his stylistic influence, Van Dyck's foremost contribution was the endowment of maiestas to the royal image, followed by divine apotheosis for posterity. A better understanding of Van Dyck's Charles as the Garter Sovereign leads us to modify our perception of the artist, since he became the painter of contemporary British history.

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The 1632 appointment of Van Dyck as Court Painter by King Charles I changed the course of art in England. But in spite of its importance, the dynamics and mechanics of this event remain imperfectly understood. This paper suggests that one determining factor was the influence of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. An early admirer of Van Dyck, Buckingham in turn incarnated the young artist's own aspirations to aristocratic status. For Charles, the Duke was a personal partner and aesthetic alter-ego whose presence in the King's psyche remained strong long after Buckingham's assassination in 1628. The examination of certain of Van Dyck's paintings of the 1620's shows how the interlocking agendas and affinities of the three men combined to affect the evolution of English art.

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Ce mémoire a pour objet d’étude Laissez les enfants venir à moi d’Antoine van Dyck, peint entre 1618 et 1620. Cette œuvre est un ajout singulier au canon existant puisqu’elle se présente sous la forme d’un portrait historié; de là sa qualification d’invention dans ce mémoire. Comme il s’agit de la première fois que le terme « invention » est utilisé pour décrire cette œuvre d’art en particulier, l’objectif implicite de l’étude est de montrer la vraisemblance de cette affirmation. Dans une optique d’abord historique, l’œuvre sera analysée dans le contexte de sa réalisation, soit la jeunesse de l’artiste et son apprentissage dans le milieu anversois du début du XVIIe siècle. L’iconographie du thème du Christ bénissant les enfants sera également considérée afin de mettre en lumière l’invention du portrait historié, avant de conclure avec l’aspect performatif de l’image créée par Van Dyck et son incidence sur le spectateur.