Paintings

Anthony van Dyck could make a face seem close enough to answer, then place another sitter high above us beneath a column or on horseback. His paintings range from these intimate encounters to crowded biblical narratives, monumental religious images and lovers absorbed in a world of their own. Following the differences between them reveals how he adapted painting to a person, a story and a patron. The works below offer several routes into that varied achievement.

A painter with several kinds of ambition

Portraits and religious painting developed together in Van Dyck's early career. In Antwerp he worked alongside Rubens while establishing his own practice. Studies of living heads could supply figures for biblical narratives as well as deepen his understanding of portraiture; his involvement in Rubens's Jesuit church ceiling project also placed him within a large enterprise in history painting. The relationship was one of collaboration as well as learning. It cannot explain every early Van Dyck as an imitation of his older colleague. ^[1]

The range of patrons widened across his career. Genoese families commissioned images of their standing and continuity. Back in the Southern Netherlands, religious bodies and individual patrons required saints, sacred encounters and images for devotion. In England, commissions extended beyond the royal household to aristocrats including Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whose great family portrait survives at Wilton House. These different audiences helped determine a painting's scale, format and setting. ^[3]

Some of that range has been lost. Van Dyck's large group portraits for Brussels town hall were destroyed in the bombardment of 1695. Studies associated with the magistrates and a small composition of Justice with seven officials preserve something of his civic portraiture. The surviving paintings therefore give us an uneven view of his ambitions. A catalogue of extant works cannot reproduce the balance of his career exactly. ^[4]

For the sequence of journeys and appointments, see the biography . Here the more revealing question is what each kind of painting asks us to notice.

Antwerp: the face, the pair and the encounter

In the Portrait of Cornelis van der Geest , about 1620, the collector's face occupies almost the entire encounter. The white ruff expands around his jaw while his dark clothing sinks into the background. His eyes do not quite face the same way as the front of his chest: that small displacement gives the impression of attention turning towards us. The short greying hair, reddish eyelids and thin moustache require a different pace of looking from the sweeping full-length portraits. The National Gallery identifies him as a prominent Antwerp collector and records later additions to the original wooden support, now covered by the frame. Even this apparently immediate likeness has a material history. ^[5]

The roughly contemporary portraits of Frans Snyders and Margareta de Vos widen the field. They are companion paintings of a married couple, now in the Frick Collection. The architectural terrace and landscape link their represented surroundings. Snyders was an animal and still-life painter with whom Van Dyck had collaborated; the portraits also present the couple's prosperity. ^{[6] [7]}

Look at the way the two figures occupy their chairs. Snyders's forearms make an open, angled framework, one hand dropping and the other resting across his knee. Margareta's embroidered bodice rises between an enormous ruff and the gathered fabric at her lap. Her hands give the dark lower half of the picture clear points of light. Both turn towards the viewer, but each has a different rhythm of curves and diagonals. A pendant pair can establish a shared world without making its sitters interchangeable.

The painted face is central in all three works, yet the surrounding space changes its meaning. Van der Geest meets us with very little furniture or scenery. The pair offer a social setting as well as a likeness. This is a useful distinction to carry into the later portraits: an elaborate background performs a different task from the features it surrounds.

Genoa: full-length figures and family standing

The Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo , painted in 1623, makes height itself expressive. Elena's dark dress spreads downwards into a broad base. Above it, the white ruff and pale face sit surprisingly high against the sky. The columns extend that upward movement, while the red parasol opens a bright canopy beside her head. Her apparently unhurried pose is supported by a composition full of movement: the dress swings, the parasol tilts, and the terrace leads away towards the landscape. ^[8]

The African attendant holding the parasol is a second person within this unequal arrangement. He stands behind Elena and looks towards her, while she addresses the space beyond the painting. The National Gallery of Art connects his presence with Genoa's participation in the African slave trade, while expressly leaving his own legal status unknown. That distinction matters. We can recognise the hierarchy constructed by the image without supplying an identity or life history that the evidence does not give us. ^[8]

The Lomellini Family uses a nearly square field for a more complicated public statement. Two older sons stand at the left; Barbara Spinola Lomellini sits with the younger children to the right. The family included the serving doge, Giacomo Lomellini, but he is absent. The Scottish National Gallery explains that regulations prohibited portraits of the doge in office as a guard against personal promotion. The picture, dated about 1625–27, could display the family while respecting that restriction. ^[9]

Its composition gives the standing men one kind of presence and the seated mother another. Armour catches the light at the left edge, while her black dress forms a broad, quiet centre. The smaller figures bring red and gold into the lower right. Hands, glances and differences in height connect the group without arranging everyone in a straight row. The architecture provides the scale for a family whose members remain individually legible.

Two further portraits show how flexibly Van Dyck could express status. In 1627 he painted Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale on horseback and his wife, Paolina Adorno Brignole-Sale , standing in an architectural setting. Genoa's museum reports a surviving payment of 747 lire for these two paintings and a third family portrait together. The sum belongs to the group of three, rather than to either single canvas. ^{[10] [11]}

Anton Giulio lifts his hat as his horse advances towards us. The gesture makes an address to the viewer within an imposing mounted image. Paolina's dress creates another kind of monumentality: its long silhouette, patterned front and spreading hem command the space between the columns and the red chair. The museum describes thin blue paint for her fabric and thicker yellow and white touches for its embroidery. ^[11] One portrait uses the horse's controlled movement; the other uses costume and stillness. Together they show that the grand full-length portrait was a flexible instrument of family representation.

England: several ways to paint a sovereign

Van Dyck's royal portraits are most interesting when their formats remain distinct. In the 1633 Equestrian Portrait with M. de St Antoine , Charles rides towards the spectator beneath an arch. His armour, the horse's pale head and the dense green drapery make a strongly framed display. St Antoine, his riding master, stands beside the horse holding the royal helmet. The Royal Collection suggests that the painting may originally have stood at the end of the Gallery at St James's Palace. ^[12]

Charles I at the Hunt , about 1636, opens that enclosure into a landscape. Charles stands apart from his horse, with his elbow projecting and his hand resting on a cane. His silver jacket catches the light against the dark foliage; the low horizon allows the outline of his hat and head to remain clear against the sky. The horse and attendants occupy the right side, leaving the king a separate interval of space. Its hunting setting lets the portrait construct an image of royal ease. ^[13]

Charles I in Three Positions has a different purpose. Painted in 1635–before June 1636, it provided views for Bernini's marble bust. The frontal head is flanked by two turned views, while different silks and lace collars distinguish the three presentations. The repetition asks us to examine the head as a form in space. It was a practical exchange between painting and sculpture, carried out across distance. ^[14]

The queen's portraits bring other people and relationships into the royal image. In Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson , 1633, architecture and rich blue costume help establish her position. Hudson was a fourteen-year-old court attendant with dwarfism, not a small child. His own gaze and presence deserve attention alongside the queen's. The portrait makes their difference in stature conspicuous, within the unequal social world of the court. ^[15]

These pictures also help explain the appeal of Van Dyck's aristocratic full-lengths. Standing, turning, riding or appearing with another person gave a sitter several ways to occupy a large canvas. The Charles I patronage page considers the royal commissions together, including the separate National Gallery equestrian portrait.

The painter within his own pictures

Van Dyck's self-images belong within this exploration of portrait types. In the oval Self Portrait , about 1640, the head turns over a prominent shoulder. The face is closely resolved; the collar and slashes of pale fabric across the dark doublet are broader, more abrupt passages. The National Portrait Gallery leaves open whether this handling indicates an unfinished work or an experiment in finish. The visible differences do not resolve that question on their own. ^[16]

In the Self-Portrait with a Sunflower , the red shoulder and lifted hand make a larger circuit. The finger draws attention to the enormous flower; the chain links the centre of the picture to the turned body. Interpretations include the artist's relationship to his monarch and a metaphor for painting and looking. The Royal Academy's account presents alternatives, and the painting rewards keeping them open. ^[17]

The double portrait Sir Endymion Porter and Anthony van Dyck adds friendship to self-presentation. Porter wears white satin and the artist black; both place a hand on a rock. Jonathan Brown's Prado essay discusses competing readings of the contrast in costume, including social rank and the intellectual standing of the painter. The shared support can suggest durability, but it does not make every detail a settled code. Van Dyck could place his own likeness within the same social negotiations that animate his commissioned portraits. ^[18]

Biblical stories: movement, attention and betrayal

Religious painting occupies a substantial part of Van Dyck's work, with its own problems of narrative and address. The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem , about 1617, already contains an ambitious arrangement of bodies. Christ sits above the donkey while a muscular figure bends across the foreground. Crowded faces, outstretched arms and overlapping garments make the procession press towards the surface. Newfields identifies the painting as a work of his late teens, closely engaged with Rubens's expansive manner. ^[19]

Samson and Delilah , about 1618–20, concentrates the movement into a dangerous pause. Samson's huge body lies across Delilah's lap, with his exposed back catching the light. Behind that body the figures gather tightly around his hair. Delilah's raised hand checks the movement of the man beside her; guards wait deeper in the picture. Dulwich identifies the moment as the preparation to shear Samson's hair. The sleeping figure cannot see the converging actions that the spectator can follow. ^[20]

These paintings use physical relationships to tell their stories. Weight, obstruction, proximity and the direction of a hand matter as much as a face. The subjects also give Van Dyck opportunities unavailable in an individual portrait: a body viewed from behind, a crowd with competing centres of attention, or an action whose consequences the viewer already knows.

The early Saint Ambrose barring Theodosius from Milan Cathedral and Saint Martin and the Beggar offer further ways into this narrative painting. The first centres on refusal at a threshold; the second on the sharing of a cloak. Their separate pages distinguish the individual objects and related compositions.

Paintings for prayer and religious communities

Devotional paintings can make the viewer's attention part of their structure. In Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague , painted in Palermo in 1624, the saint rises above the low coastal landscape with her hands open and her face lifted. Angels carry and surround her, drawing our gaze upwards. The demand for images of Rosalie grew during Palermo's plague and the rediscovery of her remains. The Metropolitan Museum also records that Van Dyck painted this image over a sketched self-portrait: a particularly vivid instance of a canvas changing purpose. ^[21]

After his return to Antwerp, sacred painting continued to answer the needs of religious patrons. The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph , about 1629–30, belonged to the Jesuit Marian congregation in Antwerp. Its subject is the monk's mystical marriage to the Virgin. ^[22] The kneeling figure's white habit spreads across the lower right, while the angel bends between him and Mary. Their joined movement makes a chain across the painting. Red, blue and gold distinguish the figures even as their hands bring them into a single encounter.

Scale could transform that encounter into a public image. The Crucifixion in Lille , about 1630, measures four metres high. ^[23] Other works bring sacred figures and contemporary people together, as in the Virgin and Child with Two Donors . The relationship between portrait and devotion could therefore occur within one composition.

The Lamentations bring us close to Christ's dead body, though their formats differ markedly. Vertical arrangements can make its weight descend through the picture; a broad canvas can spread the mourners around it. The late Antwerp Lamentation , now dated about 1640, was commissioned by Cesare Alessandro Scaglia for the chapel of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in the Franciscan church. Its original religious setting gives a specific purpose to the sustained attention paid to Christ and his grieving mother. ^[24] The Deposition and Lamentation comparison keeps four distinct paintings separate, including a Munich work whose attribution has changed.

Literary lovers and classical subjects

Van Dyck's poetic paintings explore another set of relationships between bodily action and inward absorption. Rinaldo and Armida in the Louvre illustrates Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered : the knight rests with the enchantress while his comrades approach to recover him from her enchanted world. The painting dates from 1629–32 and is associated with the patronage of Frederick Henry of Orange. It belongs to a different commission from the larger treatment acquired by Charles I. ^[25]

The small Rinaldo and Armida in the National Gallery is another object again: an oil painting on wood, dated 1634–35, repeating the Louvre composition in restrained colours. Its squared design is understood as a model for Pieter de Jode's later engraving. A painted object could preserve and transmit a composition as well as serve as a finished picture for a wall. ^[26]

Cupid and Psyche , 1639–40, draws on Apuleius. Psyche has opened the forbidden casket and fallen into a deathlike sleep; Cupid comes to revive her. ^[27] Her body stretches across a pale drapery close to the ground, while he moves towards her along a different diagonal. The living foliage and the bare tree hold these contrasting movements within a landscape. The scene asks us to consider rescue and awakening, whereas Tasso's lovers face interruption and separation.

The Royal Collection describes Cupid and Psyche as the surviving mythological painting from Van Dyck's employment as Charles I's court artist. That is a statement about this phase of his career, not his entire output. Proposed links with a Greenwich decorative scheme or a royal marriage remain hypotheses. ^[27] The Shepherd Paris , Silenus Drunk and the workshop picture of Thetis receiving Achilles' weapons extend the range of classical subjects explored through Van Dyck's compositions.

How the paintings were made and changed

The broad handling visible in a sleeve or landscape is only one part of a painting's construction. Examination can reveal prepared surfaces, initial drawing and changes beneath the finished image. Ashok Roy's study of National Gallery paintings records both dry drawing material and brushed outlines in The Balbi Children . Its figures were adjusted as painting proceeded. In the small Rinaldo and Armida model, the incised grid passes through much of the paint but beneath final white highlights, connecting the picture's making with its function for an engraver. These are findings about particular objects, rather than stages through which every Van Dyck must have passed. ^[2]

The separate National Gallery Equestrian Portrait of Charles I , NG1172, supplies another instructive case. Its technical account records trials for the horse's rear left leg and changes to the landscape, including a building subsequently painted out. The authority and apparent ease of the final image emerged through revision. Those findings belong to this canvas; they cannot be transferred to the equestrian portrait with St Antoine or to the Louvre hunt portrait. ^[28]

The binding materials varied too. Raymond White's analysis found extensive use of linseed oil in the sampled National Gallery paintings, with walnut oil in some passages and works. Some samples also contained small resin additions. The study's sample was limited in relation to the whole output. Its results support an account of choices made in particular paintings, rather than a universal recipe behind every lustrous surface. ^[29]

Changed pigments, old additions and restoration also affect what we see. A darkened colour or unevenly finished area needs investigation before it becomes an argument about authorship. For fuller discussion of these questions, see style and technique and the related drawings .

Originals, workshop paintings and uncertain attributions

A familiar composition does not by itself identify the hand that painted a particular canvas. A workshop attribution places an object within a studio context; a copy may belong to a later date and another setting. The phrase “after Van Dyck” identifies a relationship to his design and does not establish that he supervised its execution.

Several examples make the distinctions practical:

• The Parma Madonna and Child, GN357: the collection's older essay accepts Van Dyck's authorship, but the museum's 2026 statement calls the painting a workshop work, dated 1620–30. The newer attribution should accompany the image; the reason for the change is not supplied. ^{[30] [31]}
• The Vienna Thetis, GG498: the current museum record specifies Van Dyck's workshop, about 1630–32. The composition remains relevant to his mythological practice, with that qualification attached. ^[32]
• Henrietta Maria as Saint Catherine: Bendor Grosvenor's account of the 2012 conservation reports Christopher Brown's provisional assessment: studio origin, an unfinished state, and possible autograph passages pending further comparison. It does not establish an unqualified autograph attribution. ^[33]
• The two Silenus paintings: Dresden's compact vertical Drunken Silenus , Gal.-Nr. 1017, is catalogued as Van Dyck, about 1619–20. The much wider National Gallery painting, NG853, is catalogued as possibly by him. The two records and their evidence must remain separate. ^{[34] [35]}

These distinctions let us continue looking with better questions. Visible quality contributes to judgement, but so do an object's construction, condition, history and relationship to other versions. The workshop and influence page develops that wider problem.

Explore the paintings

These links lead to individual works and comparisons. The short descriptions indicate a useful starting point for looking. They are a selection of painting pages, rather than a claim to include everything Van Dyck painted.

The four images in Deposition and Lamentation require their own identifications. Their older dates should not be used to arrange them as a securely documented sequence.

A lasting language of portraiture

Van Dyck's paintings offered later artists a repertory of stances, materials and relationships. Gainsborough's The Blue Boy , painted in 1770, provides a concrete example. The National Gallery identifies the stance of George Villiers in Van Dyck's double portrait of the Villiers brothers as a source; Gainsborough also copied the portrait of the Stuart brothers. ^[39] Such encounters help explain why an individual figure, a sleeve or the interval between two sitters could remain productive long after the original commission had lost its immediate purpose.

The prints provide another way to follow that afterlife, through designs translated into lines and circulated beyond the paintings' owners.