Anthony Van Dyck, Sir

Bio

Van Dyck achieved a fame second only to that of Rubens, whose most brilliant pupil/assistant he was. He visited England in 1620, where James I decided to employ him as Court painter, but after four months he returned to Flanders and in 1621 he left for Italy. Much of his career there was spent in Genoa, where he laid the foundation of his great career as a portrait painter, depicting the Genoese aristocracy and merchant classes, and evolved the repertory of patterns of which he made constant use during his years in England. For the last ten years of his life he was in London, painting portraits of King Charles I and his court. It is for these portraits that he is best remembered, as he rendered the doomed monarch with a refinement and sensibility which was to be influential on English painting for the next two centuries. In recent years Van Dyck’s religious pictures have been reassessed. They usually combine the boldness of Rubens with a little extra refinement, derived from Titian and Correggio.