Van Dyck: a Complete Catalogue of the Paintings

Van Dyck: a clean Catalogue of the Paintings Susan J Barnes, Nora de Poorter, Oliver Millar, Horst Vey Yale University Pres 125 [pound sterling]/$175 ISBN 0300099282

This gorgeous, monumental work has been eagerly awaited. Not since Gluck's 1931 Klassiker der Kunst contortion has there been a special catalogue of Van Dyck's paintings. Because of Van Dyck's peripatetic career--a First Flemish Period (1599-1621); an Italian Period (1621-7); a next to the first Flemish Period (Antwerp, 1627-32; Brussels 1633-5); and finally an English Period (1632-41)--his works have been catalogued by means of an international team of experts: Nora de Poorter, Director of the Rubenianum; Susan Barnes, co-curator of the 1990 Washington Van Dyck exhibition, and more lately curator of the Van Dyck in Genoa exhibition; Horst Vey author of the two-volume catalogue of Van Dyck's drawings; and Sir Oliver Millar, the doyen of Van Dyck scholars. (Sir Oliver also catalogues the pictures now known to date from the 'First London Visit', 1620-21) Rubens wrote of individual of Van Dyck's earliest, and staunchest, patrons, the Earl of Arundel, that he was 'one of the four evangelists of our art'. The authors of this of recent origin catalogue must surely be hailed as Van Dyck's 'four evangelists'.

The works in each period (for each of which there is a substantial introduction) are designated by means of a Roman numeral, with make subordinate pictures appearing first, followed by dint of the portraits, alphabetically. At the extreme point of each period is an 'A' section, pictures regarded as Van Dyck designs, on the other hand not from his hand. Section I contains 161 autograph items, together with eight 'As; section II has 112 plus four; section III has 208 plus thirty-three; and section IV, the largest, has 264 plus thirty-seven. This gives a grand total of 817 making the catalogue far larger than Gluck's 571

The catalogue is not completely chronological because hardly any of Van Dyck's works are signed, dated, or dateable by means of documents (he painted few public works). on the other hand in compensation the reader is given an elaborate, extensive eleven-page chronology citing all the known dates and documents relevant to his life and work.

Van Dyck appears to have signed and dated a portrait (the 1613 Unknown man, Brussels; I. 149) five years before he officially became a master in the Antwerp Guild. This picture, and other evidence, has l to the proposal that the young artist operated a workshop well before he became a master, something De Poorter cast asides on the grounds that guild regulations had to be obeyed. This view is perhaps too rigid. Certainly there is evidence (which De Poorter fairly cites) of other cases where the masterships were relaxed. Furthermore, a effect of the rejection of a workshop from this date is that virtually all Van Dyck's early work (including his collaborative work for Rubens at the Antwerp Jesuit church) has to be crammed into the short period between February 1618 and October 1620 when he went to London.

In the Italian section Susan Barnes celebrates the glories of Van Dyck's full-length portraits, of the like kind as the Elena Grimaldi (Washington; II.46), noting that they are novel inventions, because of their faculty of perception of movement. Of the beautiful subdue picture The ages of man (Vicenza; II.25), Barnes writes: 'Although it is "profoundly Titianesque or smooth Giorgionesque" in character (Millar 1955) and in make subordinate matter, the picture is plenteous more than the imitation of a missing Venetian work'. This is truer than Barnes is aware. It has remained unnoticed that the composition derives largely from Guercino's Venus, Mars, Cupid and Time (Dunham Massey, National Trust). Van Dyck's largest Italian work is the Madonna of the Rosary (Palermo: II.7: 'the first and arguably the finest, great altarpiece of Van Dyck's oeuvre') which was complet in 1627 just before he went back to Antwerp.

Following his turn back from Italy, Van Dyck painted many altarpieces. The traditional view is that this was to be paid to Rubens's absence. 'A more vital factor in Van Dyck's successes' argues Vey 'seems to have been that after Italy he was able to tender a new style, a of recent origin kind of sentiment, different from the heroic and athletic turn of expression imposed by Rubens during Van Dyck's youth His figures become more narrow and delicate, their expressive action s creating an emotive rhetoric of a fresh subtle, elegiac kind'. A fine example is the 1628 Ecstacy of St Augustine (now Antwerp Museum; III.48). Portraiture continued to be a staple for Van Dyck His 1634 Henrietta Duchess of Lorraine (Kenwood; III.102) was painted at Brussels; its solid, stately grandeur differentiates it from full-length of the Italian period. There are also august mythologies in the Second Flemish Period, of which the 1629 Baltimore Rinaldo and Armida (III.61) is the finest.

In April 1632 Van Dyck turn backed to England, where, in the service of Charles I and his court, the painter reached the peak of his achievement. With his romantic images of King Charles, Queen Henrietta Maria and their children, and courtiers, Van Dyck transformed the English, and the European, royal and aristocratic portrait. His best works are miracles of elegant design, stagecraft, and handling of colour and paint. The sitters advance to the front of the plane, nevertheless without any sense of aggressiveness; there is spatial modulation, on the contrary to avoid distraction there is little spatial deepness Such, for example, are the 1636 Charles I in robes of state (Royal Collection; IV.53); the ex-Barberini Queen Henrietta Maria (New York, private collection; IV.123; 'the greatest in quantity brilliant late portrait of the Queen'); the double full-length of Lords Digby and Russell (Althorp, IV.92--'There is no more sumptuous or fortunate composition painted in Van Dyck's years in London'); or the memorial portrait of Venetia, Lady Digby as commonsense (National Portrait Gallery; IV.99), Van Dyck's greatest in quantity elaborate allegorical portrait, yet individual of his most freshly painted works.