The Iconographie

For the earliest known edition of the Iconographie, published by Gillis Hendricx in 1645, Van Dyck’s unfinished etched self-portrait was made into a frontispiece by the engraver Jacob Neefs, the head transformed into a marble bust placed on a pedestal and inscribed with the edition’s title (“One Hundred Images of Princes, Scholars, Painters,” etc.). The copy shown here is one of the few preserved in a seventeenth-century binding. The painted portrait that Van Dyck originally intended to make into a print was later engraved by Lucas Vorsterman. In it, the artist wears a gold chain that may be the one awarded to him by Charles I in 1633.

The rolls of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke for the year 1610 list Van Dyck as an apprentice with the guild’s dean, the painter Hendrick van Balen. Nearly two decades later, Van Dyck focused his attention on his teacher’s craggy face and wispy hair, only roughing out his costume and hands. In a grisaille oil sketch at Boughton House, Van Dyck subsequently fleshed out this composition, clarifying the sculpted head on which Van Balen rests his hand and situating him in front of a column. The inventory of Van Balen’s widow lists a number of plaster casts after antique sculptures; these may have inspired the one included in this portrait.

The son and namesake of the greatest Netherlandish painter of the sixteenth century, Pieter Brueghel the Younger devoted his career to producing a vast number of copies and variations of his father’s work. Van Dyck made two drawings of Brueghel to prepare a print for the Iconographie series. In the drawing shown here, Brueghel appears in three-quarter profile, turned away from the viewer, clasping his cloak to his chest. The final print, based on a drawing now in Saint Petersburg (State Hermitage Museum), brings Brueghel’s hands closer together and positions him frontally, directing his gaze outward. Van Dyck adopted this latter pose for an etching, which he executed himself and endowed with the swift quality of a pen sketch.

The painter Gaspar de Crayer dominated the market for altarpieces in seventeenth-century Brussels. Van Dyck’s drawing is highly finished, but for his engraving, Paulus Pontius worked instead from an intermediary grisaille, the tonal richness of which could communicate Van Dyck’s intentions better than a chalk drawing. De Crayer holds a portfolio in the drawing, which Pontius reworked as part of the cape slung over the sitter’s right shoulder. It is not clear if Van Dyck intended the portfolio to melt away into De Crayer’s robes in the sketch or if Pontius simply misread the dark lower part of the grisaille. The portfolio, a reference to De Crayer’s art, may have seemed too vulgar an attribute for a socially ambitious artist whose career progressed from a seat on the Brussels council in 1627 to an appointment at the archducal court in 1635.

Van Dyck’s Iconographie series of prints includes three Spanish generals whose military careers brought them to Flanders, among them, Manuel Frockas, Count of Feria. Simplicity of composition and relatively cursory execution distinguish these generals’ portrait drawings, likely all made from life in 1631–32. While the drawings appear to depict the sitters in civilian dress, the later oil sketches and engravings show them in full armor, each holding a commander’s baton. Like the hands that enliven the compositions, these features were probably all added from memory or invented by the artist.

In the early years of the seventeenth century, Orazio Gentileschi worked as a painter in Rome, where he came under the influence of Caravaggio. His career then took him to Turin, Genoa, Paris, and finally the court of Charles I in London, where he was joined by his daughter, Artemisia, also a painter. Van Dyck shows the artist, who was known for his difficult personality, looking out at the viewer in a surly manner. The general composition seems to have been based on Italian prototypes, the work of Titian above all, present in the collections of Charles I in London.

Better known by his Latinized name Gevartius, Gaspar Gevaerts was a preeminent philologist and historian, serving as secretary of Antwerp for four decades. In the drawing preparatory to an engraving by Paulus Pontius for the series known as the Iconographie, Van Dyck alludes to Gevaerts’s scholarly endeavors with a single book. He renders the face in exquisite focus while rapidly sketching elements of dress and pose with thicker lines. Although the drawing is incised for transfer to the engraver’s plate, Pontius worked from Van Dyck’s later oil sketch for Gevaerts’s final pose and costume. In the oil sketch, Van Dyck trimmed the sitter’s collar with lace and added a fur-lined cape, slung partly over the left arm. The modification lends Gevaerts’s slender figure a more robust aspect; the cape also refers to his public office.

The painter Joos de Momper specialized in mountainous landscapes. In the portrait at right, Van Dyck’s etching technique — consisting of stippling, lines alternatingly scratchy or fluent, and areas of dense hatching — conveys the varied textures of the wrinkled skin, curly hair, leather glove, and rugged landscape. Probably to preserve Van Dyck’s original, the plate was not finished with the burin in later states, but a completely new print was made by the engraver Lucas Vorsterman. The state shown here of this second plate bears the address of Martinus van den Eynden, the first recorded publisher of the Iconographie.

Van Dyck’s most fully worked-out etching depicts one of his main engravers with the costume and swagger of a gentleman. In this second state of the print, an unidentified engraver added hatching in the background, but Van Dyck’s masterful graphic treatment of the subject — despite scratches in the plate and other small technical accidents — can still be fully appreciated. Even more than the painting on which it was based, the print takes advantage of the contrast between the sitter’s dark hair and his pale complexion, and between the slashed black doublet and the white linen visible underneath it. Another portrait of Pontius after Van Dyck, which the former engraved himself, is shown here.

Jan van Ravesteyn was a portrait painter active in The Hague, and Van Dyck likely drew him when he was there working on important commissions from stadholder Frederick Henry. Van Dyck’s sympathetic portrait depicts Van Ravesteyn, who was around sixty, with great dignity. The artist probably worked from life, using a sharp piece of chalk that allowed for sufficient detail to draw the head and the intricate patterns formed by the layers of the linen ruff, while the outline of Van Ravesteyn’s body is indicated more broadly.

Unlike the other grisailles, Van Dyck’s portrait of Nicolaas Rockox, a towering figure in the political and cultural life of Antwerp, has an unusual round format. It was likely painted for Rockox’s own collection and reflected his interest in ancient coins. Paulus Pontius’s engraving meanwhile embellishes the portrait with an architectural framework and Latin verses by Gaspar Gevaerts that praise Rockox for his unwavering service and indifference to power. These features depart from the Iconographie series and indicate that the engraving was intended to circulate independently.

As in his own self-portrait, Van Dyck etched only the head of the still-life painter Frans Snyders in this print, basing it on the portrait in The Frick Collection. It may be the only plate in Van Dyck’s Iconographie series for which it can be shown that the painting preceded the print by several years. More than the print’s final version, finished with the burin by the engraver Jacob Neefs, the etched state brings out the aloof distinction with which Van Dyck depicted his colleague.

Van Dyck’s brooding portrait of the engraver Lucas Vorsterman has colored the latter’s reputation, along with anecdotal evidence for his instability, aggression, and hostile relationship with Peter Paul Rubens. Van Dyck knew Vorsterman well from the period when both were working under Rubens’s supervision, and he may have learned how to etch from him. In his autograph print, Van Dyck amplified the nervous energy of his chalk drawing. A second portrait of Vorsterman engraved after Van Dyck is displayed here.

Lucas Vorsterman was a major figure in seventeenth-century Flemish art, both as a printmaker and as a publisher. His close collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens ended when the two artists fell out, opening the way for Vorsterman to pursue independent success. The present print, made by the engraver’s son after an unknown model by Van Dyck, captures the complex and haughty nature of its subject. An etched portrait of Vorsterman by Van Dyck is also known, of which an impression is exhibited downstairs, together with the drawing that served as its model.

The painter Jan Wildens, who was also active as an art dealer, specialized in wooded landscapes. He is known for collaborating on the backgrounds of other artists’ works, notably those of Peter Paul Rubens and possibly Van Dyck as well. In this drawing, the initial sketch in black chalk is finished with large areas of wash in order to model the figure. The outlines are incised for transfer onto the copper plate, which was engraved by Paulus Pontius, likely without the mediation of a grisaille on panel.

Fredrick Henry, Prince of Orange and stadholder of the Dutch Republic between 1625 and 1647, became an important patron of Van Dyck’s after the artist’s return from Italy in 1628. The history paintings he commissioned speak to his ambition to raise the artistic prestige of his court, and the portraits were the first Van Dyck made for a head of state and his family. Here, Paulus Pontius’s polished engraving technique skillfully translates the tone and color of Van Dyck’s painted portrait of Frederick Henry. The added parapet bears an inscription listing the stadholder’s titles, and the commander’s baton projects into the viewer’s space, lending greater depth to the composition.