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Van Dyck between Master and Model

Adam Eaker

At the very start of his career, Anthony van Dyck made a information about its individual members. Rubenss status as
series of paintings of Saint Sebastian (Figs. 1, 2, 8). In Van court painter exempted him from registering his apprentices
Dycks depiction, we catch sight of Sebastian at the moment with the Antwerp guild, with the result that there is far less
when his tormentors wrench back his arms, bind his calves, archival evidence for his workshop than those of long-forgot-
or push down his head. The paintings suspend the saint in ten painters in the city.5 It is clear, however, that immediately
the moment just before his failed execution.1 By painting after his return from Italy in late 1608, Rubens established
Sebastian this way, Van Dyck departed from the artistic con- himself as the most prominent painter, and most sought-
vention of representing the saint in isolation and already after teacher, in his hometown. He boasted in a letter of
pierced with arrows.2 Previous writers have attempted to 1611 that some young men remain here for several years
explain this choice by adducing Van Dycks sources, specifi- with other masters, awaiting my convenience. . . . I can tell
cally, a painting by Palma il Giovane and an engraving after you truly, without any hyperbole, that I have had to refuse
it by Egidius Sadeler,3 or an altarpiece by Wenzel Cobergher over one hundred.6
formerly in Antwerps cathedral.4 The existence of these Like these other young men, Van Dyck had to prove him-
precedents, however, does not fully explain Van Dycks com- self with another master before entering Rubenss studio.
mitment to painting the binding of Sebastian throughout After an apprenticeship with Hendrik van Balen, Van Dyck
the early years of his career. My reading of these paintings registered as a master with Antwerps Guild of St. Luke on
takes its point of departure from a further puzzling detail February 11, 1618. Nevertheless, sources refer to Van Dyck as
of the seriesnamely, Van Dycks self-portrayal as the mar- a student or assistant in Rubenss workshop for several years
tyred saint. Although underplayed by most writers on the after this date.7 Van Dycks Sebastian paintings, surviving in
paintings, Van Dycks identification with Sebastian is an multiple copies of three basic variations, form a touchstone
essential key to these works interpretation, revealing them in the Van Dyck literature for the evolution of the artists
to be one of the painters most important commentaries on style during this still poorly understood chapter of his
his art. career.8 They document a transition from isolated blocks of
The theme of Saint Sebastians martyrdom allowed Van primary colors to a uniform Venetian palette, and from
Dyck to rework again and again the image of a youth stripped bold passages of impasto to a smooth and elegant surface
almost entirely nude, his limbs put into place by other men. (Figs. 2, 1). The sorting of these paintings into a chronologi-
Described in this way, the paintings could not only depict the cal sequence on the basis of style has offered a foothold
martyrdom of a saint but also evoke an essential practice of where textual evidence is lacking. A painting in storage at the
early modern art. In artists workshops, apprentices regularly National Gallery of Ireland likely marks the earliest stage in
shed their clothing to pose for their masters. With the Sebas- this trajectory (Fig. 3).9 Rarely exhibited and little studied,
tian paintings, Van Dyck could propose an analogy between the canvas depicts a young man, nude except for a loincloth,
the martyrdom of the saint and the practice of posing; he who stands with his arms folded behind his backa pose
used disguised self-portraiture to identify not with the artist well suited to a Saint Sebastian. Typical for Van Dycks earli-
but, rather, with the model. On the one hand, Van Dycks est paintings are the viscous, streaky passages around the
Sebastian paintings link him to the widespread contemporary thighs and loincloth and the rapt attention paid to the knob-
controversy regarding artists dependence on the model and biness of the boys feet and knees.
declare the young painters commitment to life study. On The Dublin painting finds Van Dyck operating in his most
the other, Van Dycks self-depiction as both martyr and Caravaggesque mode. Associated now above all with glamor-
model enabled him to allegorize his specific position within ous portraits of aristocrats, Van Dyck might seem far removed
the studio of Peter Paul Rubens. There, Van Dycks speciali- from Caravaggio and his humble models. But early commen-
zation in working from life provided him with the impetus to tators, particularly those with an idealist bent, grouped them
become a portrait painter and to propose an aesthetic alter- together as painters whose works originated in the encounter
native to Rubens. Yet while the young artists embrace of the with another subject, not in solitary ideation. In Giovan Pie-
model enabled him to emerge from his masters shadow, it tro Belloris lives of the two artists, he particularly highlights
ultimately had a calamitous effect on his historical their shared economic dependence on the model. According
reputation. to Bellori, when Caravaggio could not afford models, he was
unable to paint; likewise, the spendthrift Van Dyck is said to
The Young Van Dyck have nearly bankrupted himself while in London by main-
Among the enduring challenges posed by the study of Van taining a household that included a stable of professional
Dyck, perhaps none is more vexing than the nature and models.10
extent of his collaboration with Rubens during the earliest The mediating figure between Caravaggio and Van Dyck
chapter of Van Dycks career. Despite the fame and scale of was Rubens, who played a significant role in the introduction
Rubenss studio, we possess remarkably little concrete of Caravaggios manner to Antwerp after his return from
174 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

1 Anthony van Dyck, Saint Sebastian


Bound for Martyrdom, ca. 1621, oil on
canvas, 783/ 4 591/ 4 in. (199.9
150.6 cm). Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische
Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich,
607 (artwork in the public domain;
photograph provided by BPK, Berlin /
Alte Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY)

Italy. Rubens painted a copy of Caravaggios Entombment and Flemish precedents (Fig. 4). In this, as in his establishment
advocated the purchase of his Madonna of the Rosary by the of a large-scale studio generally, Rubens built on the example
Dominican church in Antwerp in 1617. Earlier, he had coun- of Frans Floris.14 In his biography of the artist, Karel van
seled his patron the duke of Mantua to acquire the artists Mander describes Floris instructing his apprentices, when
controversial Death of the Virgin, a work for which Caravaggio working on large-scale paintings, to Put in these or those
had supposedly studied a prostitutes corpse.11 Yet Rubenss heads; Van Mander notes that Floris always had a good few
own use of the model departed from Caravaggios precedent. of those to hand on panels.15 Indeed, a number of such
In Rubenss finished paintings, the model always appears head studies by Floris survive and can be securely associated
through a veil of transmission, at the end of a chain of draw- with larger compositions.16 A decade after Van Manders text
ings and oil sketches that assimilated the sitter to an artistic was published, Rubenss studio would revive Floriss practice,
ideal. As Bellori wrote, Rubenss figures conformed to an with his assistants regularly copying a large stock of head
idea of faces . . . that were without variety, not differentiated studies made from the live model or incorporating them into
from each other.12 larger compositions.17
Rubens made two major categories of preparatory works From the inventory of Rubenss estate after his death in
from the model in the decade after his return from Italy: 1640, we know that he held on to a large number of his head
drawn studies of the body and painted studies of heads. studies throughout his career, in addition to many by Van
Rubenss figure drawings in chalk emulated those of Anni- Dyck.18 After an intensive period of production in the 1610s,
bale Carracci,13 but his head studies mingled Italian and Rubens appears to have stopped making his own head studies
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 175

2 Anthony van Dyck, Saint Sebastian


Bound for Martyrdom, ca. 1618, oil on
canvas, 563/ 4 46 in. (144 117 cm).
Musee du Louvre, Paris, MI918
(artwork in the public domain;
photograph by Stephane Marechalle,
RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource,
NY)

about 1620.19 However, in a letter of 1638, he attested to his Dycks assistants there. Ever since the discovery of this testi-
continued use of the studies he had already made, requesting mony in the nineteenth century, scholars have disputed the
that his friend Lucas Faydherbe bring him a panel with three exact dates for the Dom van Ceulen workshop and the extent
such heads on it, and asking as well that Faydherbe not let to which it was an independent studio or merely an out-
the panel be seen in transit.20 From Rubenss request for growth of Rubenss atelier.22
secrecy, we can surmise some of the value the head studies Van Dycks apostle portraits, the subject of the Hillewerve
had for him as intellectual property. They provided Rubens dispute, were the young artists response to Rubenss head
with a stockpile of fascinating faces that he, or his assistants, studies and a revision of an earlier project by the master, an
could repurpose at will, without depending on the physical apostle series painted for the Spanish duke of Lerma (Figs. 5,
availability of a live model for every painting. 6). In a letter of 1618, Rubens refers to copies he had his stu-
The most extensive primary source for Van Dycks early dents make of the series, and Van Dyck himself may have
career also concerns the painting of heads. In a trial held been charged with the assignment.23 In his own apostle
from 1660 to 1662, three of Van Dycks former associates series, however, Van Dyck greatly reduced the format of
gave testimony regarding the authenticity of a set of apostle Rubenss paintings, by and large stripping the apostles of
portraits that were attributed to Van Dyck when a certain identifying attributes and employing the vivid brushwork
Canon Hillewerve had purchased them.21 During the trial, more typical of an oil sketch. In these works, Van Dyck took a
Jan Breughel the Younger testified that he had visited his definitive step toward establishing the autonomy of the head
friend Van Dyck in the latters own workshop in the Antwerp study, a process that would culminate in the tronies of Jan
house known as the Dom van Ceulen (the Cathedral of Lievens and Rembrandt van Rijnthat is, head studies that
Cologne). Two other painters, Justus van Egmont and Her- functioned as independent works of art.24 Another distin-
man Servaes, likewise declared that they had worked as Van guishing feature of Van Dycks series was its physiognomic
176 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

4 Peter Paul Rubens, Four Studies of a Man s Head, ca. 1615, oil on
panel transferred to canvas, 193/ 4 261/ 8 in. (50.1 66.3 cm).
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (artwork in the public
domain; photograph provided by Bridgeman-Giraudon / Art
Resource, NY)

Another familiar figure from the Antwerp art world who


modeled for Van Dycks apostles was Abraham Grapheus, a
calligrapher and factotum of the citys Guild of St. Luke. Bee-
tle-browed and careworn, Grapheuss face was a favorite with
Antwerps artists for more than twenty years (Fig. 6). In addi-
tion to Van Dycks apostle series, Grapheus appears in the
background of Martin de Voss altarpiece for the painters
guild in Antwerp Cathedral and in a number of compositions
by Jacob Jordaens. We can identify Grapheus in these paint-
ings because his likeness is preserved in a celebrated portrait
by Cornelis de Vos, given by the painter to the Guild of St.
Luke in 1619. With this portrait as a point of departure, we
can reconstruct an entire modeling career for Grapheus,
the goal of two recent exhibitions held in Caen and Ghent.26
Nonetheless, not a single piece of archival or literary evi-
dence survives regarding Grapheuss work as a model. Were
it not for the preservation of his official portrait, he would be
as anonymous as any of the other models whose faces punctu-
ate seventeenth-century Flemish paintings.
The nameless young man from Van Dycks Dublin canvas
was another frequent model for the apostle series. We recog-
nize him in a John the Evangelist in Budapest,27 a Simon in
3 Anthony van Dyck, A Nude Youth, ca. 1618, oil on canvas,
Dresden (Fig. 7),28 and, sporting a beard and armor, in a
381/ 8 187/ 8 in. (97 48 cm). The National Gallery of Ireland,
Dublin, 275 (artwork in the public domain; photograph Saint George that was likely in Rubenss own collection.29 He
provided by The National Gallery of Ireland) appears in the background of the Descent of the Holy Spirit now
in Potsdam and holding up the arm of a drunken Silenus in
realism. There is evidence that some of his apostles were Dresden.30 The different poses in which Van Dyck depicted
actually disguised or historiated portraits, while others likely this floppy-haired boy suggest that he was not working from a
only gave the tantalizing suggestion of portraying a real sitter. single study but had access to his model over a longer period
Among Van Dycks models were recognizable figures from of time. In 1968 Gregory Martin proposed a tentative identifi-
the close-knit world of Antwerp artists. In his deposition cation of this model with the painter Giusto Sustermans,
from the Hillewerve trial, Breughel recalled having seen the based on a resemblance with Van Dycks likeness of the latter
artist at work on his series of apostle portraits some forty years in the series of portrait prints known as the Iconography.31
before. Surprised to recognize his uncle the engraver Peeter Alternatively, we might associate him, entirely speculatively,
de Jode in one of Van Dycks images, Breughel claimed to with either of Van Dycks two known assistants from the Dom
have asked the artist, Whom are you painting there? to van Ceulen, Justus van Egmont or Herman Servaes, or with
which Van Dyck responded, Im going to make a beautiful his childhood friend and colleague Jan Breughel the Youn-
apostle out of him.25 ger. All three men were born in 1601.32
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 177

5 Peter Paul Rubens, Saint James the Apostle, ca. 161213, oil on 6 Anthony van Dyck, An Apostle, ca. 161821, oil on paper
panel, 42 331/ 8 in. (108 84 cm). Museo Nacional del mounted on oak, 22 173/ 4 in. (57 45 cm).
Prado, Madrid, P01648 (artwork in the public domain; Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 790F (artwork in
photograph Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado) the public domain; photograph by J org P. Anders, provided by
BPK, Berlin / Gemaldegalerie, Berlin / Art Resource, NY)

In the early seventeenth century, it would not be surprising observer like the Carraccis student Francesco Albani saw the
to find one artistparticularly a young artistserving as a reformers downfall in the compulsive recalibration of an aes-
model for another. In artists workshops, modeling often fell thetic canon against the bodily reality of the model. As
within the purview of an apprentices duties; indeed, it was Albani wrote:
viewed as one way for him to master his art. For their part,
the state-sponsored academies that proliferated over the . . . the Carracci lost a lot and remained poor, because they
course of the long seventeenth century proposed a new cate- did not trust their own powers, and could have made bet-
gorical distinction between students and models, resulting in ter works without laboring over them so much. . . . Let me
the gradual emergence of the artists model as a discrete pro- say that when Annibale Carracci sketched out without
fessional identity. The casualness with which Van Dyck using a model the Dead Christ in the lap of the Virgin
recruited models from his artistic milieu reflected his educa- that is over the altar in S. Francesco a Ripa in Trastevere,
tion in a guild- and workshop-based system in which this dif- he made it absolutely divine. Then he got a certain servant
ferentiation was not yet fully in force. But the vicissitudes of of his who was rather stocky to pose for him unclothed,
his artistic reputation would stem in part from the new aca- and altered the first product of his most rare intellect, and
demic regulation of modeling that began in Van Dycks because he trusted himself too little, spoiled it. . . .34
lifetime.
Caravaggios models were even more notorious: poor pil-
Models and Martyrs grims, a dead prostitute, and a gypsy woman who chanced
When Van Dyck made his Sebastian paintings, the depen- to be passing in the street.35 Just as shocking to his critics
dence of artists on the live model had come to occupy a cen- was Caravaggios reputation for painting his models without
tral role in both aesthetic and theological debates. Writers of the intervention of drawing, a claim largely borne out by
the Counter-Reformation such as Johannes Molanus, Carlo technical examination of his surviving works.36
Borromeo, and Gabriele Paleotti inveighed against the use of Despite the critics tales of prostitutes and vagrants, tex-
recognizable models for the representation of saints.33 At the tual as well as visual evidence indicates that young artists
same time, the Carracci and Caravaggio made the use of themselves were the most frequent models. The Carracci
lowly and unidealized models a trademark of artistic reform, provide one striking illustration. According to Carlo
much to the dismay of their critics. Even a sympathetic Cesare Malvasia:
178 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

fresco painting. Malvasia evokes a vivid image of Guido not


disdaining to bare an arm, a leg, his chest, as a reciprocal
courtesy and familiarity.40 The disguised self-portrait in
Guidos breakthrough commission at S. Michele in Bosco
would monumentalize this form of self-advertisement.41 That
Guido portrayed himself in the figure of a woman ties his
image back to studio realities, where young menlike Ludo-
vico Carracci sitting for Venuswere coveted models for fig-
ures of both sexes.
The posing of apprentices was both a matter of practicality
and, as the examples above show, pedagogy. It was also impli-
cated in the labor system of the workshop, in which the com-
pletion of any artwork required the collaboration of a group
of men performing a variety of tasks according to a strictly
enforced hierarchy. While Malvasia saw the Carracci academy
in its early years as an egalitarian space where young artists
modeled for and learned from one another, other writers
emphasized the authority of the master and the passivity of
the apprentices who modeled for him. Such an attitude
clearly emerges in Belloris account of Federico Baroccis
working method (and is confirmed by the artists surviving
life drawings):

First he would conceive the action that was to be repre-


sented and before he made a sketch of it, he would pose
his young assistants [giovini] as models, and made them
gesture according to what he had in his imagination, and
asked them whether they felt any strain in that gesture,
and whether if they turned a little more or less they found
it more restful; from this he tried out the most natural
7 Anthony van Dyck, Simon, ca. 161821, oil on panel, 243/ 4
187/ 8 in. (63 48 cm). Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister der movements, without affectation, and would make sketches
Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, 1020 (artwork in the of them. In the same way, if he wanted to introduce a
public domain; photograph by Elke Estel / Hans-Peter Klut, group of figures, he would arrange the young men
provided by BPK, Berlin / Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, together for the action, and from his sketches he would
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden / Art Resource, NY) then form the finished design by himself.42

Belloris description evokes a collaboration between master


[They] made a practice of posing as models for one and apprentices in which the latter embody the masters
another; Agostino prided himself in being able to adopt invention, and their verbal testimony serves to check any ten-
the exact poses and attitudes desired by Ludovico, for he dency toward the affected or unnatural. While the giovini are
believed that anyone who did not understand these poses primarily passive, put into place by the master, they make an
would not know how to represent them well and that this essential contribution to his art by concretizing poses that
was why the poses of the professional models were artifi- had previously existed only in his mind.
cial and lifeless. Nor did Ludovico, who was rather plump By all accounts, a good model was hard to find. Giovanni
and fleshy, deem it beneath him to strip to the waist and Battista Passeri tells us that Andrea Sacchis drawing academy
have his back copied by Annibale in the attitude needed was distinguished by the excellence of its model, a certain
for the Venus . . . .37 Caporal Leone, who was known for the spirit with which he
endowed the attitudes in which he was posed.43 Such per-
formances, however, were beyond the ken of most models.
In the North, Samuel van Hoogstraten similarly required his
As Bellori wrote:
students to act out the scenes from history that he assigned
them to depict, a practice he may have learned from his . . . when the painter or sculptor undertakes to imitate the
teacher Rembrandt.38 workings of the heart, which derive from the passions, he
A beautiful young artist might turn modeling into a kind of cannot envisage them from the model that he has before
professional currency. In Malvasias life of Guido Reni, the him, who retains no emotion, and who on the contrary
theme of modeling runs throughout the account of the languishes in mind and body in the pose that he has
artists early career. The biographer tells us that Ludovico assumed, and keeps still at the will of another [e si ferma ad
Carracci found that Guidos native beauty made him a fine arbitrario altrui].44
model for an angel, and . . . many times he drew him in that
guise.39 Guido subsequently offered his services as a model Bellori characterizes the model as a figure both passive and
to Gabriele Ferantini, in exchange for learning the secrets of abject, whom it would be fruitless to treat as a source of
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 179

emotional verisimilitude. In his account, the very act of pos- longer an aspiring artist who learns from his poses, the
ingkeep[ing] still at the will of anotherviolates the model in this tale has become an outsider to art, ridiculed
models autonomy. Although he had spoken positively of for his lack of understanding. His resistance contrasts with
Baroccis use of his assistants to obtain an effect of natural- the entirely passive figure directed by Annibale Carracci, an
ness, Bellori was careful to convey that these models served artist who, as Bernini noted, maintained his physical distance
only as a test or check on poses that had originated in the from the model. Long before Berninis anecdote, the image
artists solitary invention. This stance reflected Belloris status of the brawny but dimwitted porter had become proverbial
as one of the major spokesmen for an emergent system of in art literature.50 According to Malvasia, early critics of Anni-
academic education that imposed new regulations on bale Carracci called his works low and trivial . . . and thus an
models.45 easy undertaking for any inexperienced painter who. . . could
The state-sponsored academies sought both to provide very easily get some porter to pose in the nude or with a piece
suitable models to students and to defer life study until the of drapery.51 The English painter Edward Norgate jestingly
most advanced stage of their education, after an extended defined the drawing academy as a Roome where in the mid-
course of copying from engravings and plaster casts. To this dle, a hired Long sided Porter or such like is to be set, stand
end, academies went to great lengths to prevent students or hang naked sometimes in a posture for two or three
from studying models outside the schools supervision. The howres.52 In these accounts, the tedious manual labor
founding charter of the Royal Academy of Painting and implied in the porters profession provided an analogy for
Sculpture in Paris forbade the holding of modeling sessions the inexperienced artists mindless copying of nature.
elsewhere, even in private studios;46 earlier in the century, Other writers drew on a classical precedent when they
the Academy of St. Luke in Rome had attempted with less argued that an act of violence might be necessary to elicit the
success to enforce a similar prohibition among its mem- proper performance from the model. Seneca the Elders Con-
bers.47 At the Antwerp academy, which held its first session troversiae, a collection of fictional legal debates, contains the
in 1665, the model himself was recruited to play a disciplin- case of the celebrated painter Parrhasius, accused of tortur-
ary role as a sort of overseer of the academys students; ing an elderly slave to death so that he might serve as the
according to the regulations, if he kept silent about an model for Prometheus.53 Early modern travelers to Rome
infraction, the model was to be dismissed on the spot.48 reworked the tale of Parrhasius, casting Michelangelo as the
When Gianlorenzo Bernini received members of the Paris protagonist. In 1719 Jonathan Richardson expressed his dis-
academy on June 16, 1665, he catered to their interest in gust at
modeling with a pair of anecdotes. In one he recalled wit-
nessing, as a young boy, Annibale Carracci accept the honor a Story which passes very currantly of this Great Master
of posing the model at a Roman drawing academy, which [Michelangelo], and that is that he had a Porter fixd as to
he did without going near him, only ordering the model to a Cross, and stabbd him that he might the better express
assume the pose he desired. Bernini then remarked how the Dying Agonies of our Lord in a Crucifix he was paint-
rare it was to find a beautiful model, recounting that ing: I find no good Ground for this Slander. Perhaps tis a
Copy of a like Story of Parrhassius [sic], the truth of which
One day [Bernini] noticed that a porter who had brought is also much doubted of. . . .54
him something had a fine torso, so he drew him unawares
lest he should object. In order to gain more time and to Works that too persuasively rendered agony troubled their
make him stay, he gave him wine and paid double. Another beholders. They awakened the suspicion that models had
time he made him bare his arms, which he considered mar- become real-life martyrs to art.
velously beautiful and one day when he had a nude model, David Young Kim has written eloquently about the horror
he asked him to come so as to accustom him to the idea of potentially inspired by such excessive realism.55 He illustrates
working in this way. The model informed the man that he his argument in part with an anecdote from Giorgio Vasari
himself earned fifteen crowns a month, and that he could that is of direct relevance to Van Dycks Saint Sebastians.
easily earn as much. He finally brought himself to do it and Vasaris tale, itself a revision of Senecas controversy, occurs
the Cavaliere, in order not to scare him off, put him into a in his life of Francesco Bonsignori. According to Vasari,
fairly easy position, with his right leg crossed over the left Bonsignoris patron was dissatisfied with his rendering of
and his chin on his right hand and his elbow on his knee. Saint Sebastians martyrdom. To remedy the situation, the
After a little while, in order not to put him off, he allowed patron had Bonsignori tie up his model, yet another porter,
him to rest. When after a short time he told him to take up after which the patron ran into the room with a loaded
his position again he put his left leg over his right and his crossbow . . . screaming at the top of his voice: Traitor, you
left elbow on his knee, which was the opposite of his origi- are dead, I have caught you where I wanted.56 In this way,
nal pose. When he was told that this was not how he had painter and patron conspired to put the model in the proper
been seated before, he insisted that it was, and when he state of terror they required of Sebastian.
was told that it was not he got up in a temper, picked up his Van Dycks Sebastian paintings offer an interesting gloss
clothes and left, declaring that they were making fun of on such claims about violence and realism. In contrast to
him and swearing never to return.49 Bonsignori, in his scenes of martyrdom Van Dyck did not
aim for a documentary depiction of anguish. In one varia-
Coaxed out of his clothes with wine and cash, Berninis tion, that of the Edinburgh and earlier Munich Sebastians,
porter resembles a character from picaresque fiction. No the saint looks up to the heavens, as if pleading for
180 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

8 Anthony van Dyck, Saint Sebastian


Bound for Matyrdom, ca. 161820, oil on
canvas, 901/ 8 625/ 8 in. (229 159 cm).
Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staats-
gemaldesammlungen, Munich, 371
(artwork in the public domain;
photograph provided by BPK, Berlin /
Alte Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY)

deliverance (Fig. 8).57 In the others, he looks out at the male nude, Van Dyck insisted on revealing the labor of both
viewer, equal parts impassive and confrontational. As Julius models and artists in putting that nude into place.
Held has written, the graceful, lissome youth seems to pay Posing the model did not, of course, necessarily mean that
no heed to the machinations preceding his ordeal.58 In fact, the artist physically manipulated the body himself. Artists
the true interest of Van Dycks Sebastian paintings lies pre- might simply direct their models verbally, as in Berninis rec-
cisely in these machinations, the work of putting a beautiful ollection of Annibale Carracci, or they could substitute wax
body into a beautiful pose. Van Dyck builds his composition figurines and jointed dolls for live models striking a pose.
around the contrast between the milky-skinned form of the The fact that across European languages model can denote
young saint and the roughened, leathery bodies of the execu- either a human being who poses or a figurine that is posed
tioners who manipulate his body. The saints poses in these attests to the passivity generally attributed to this kind of
paintings, however elegant, are not struck autonomously; labor.59 Not literal depictions of how models were positioned
instead, they are imposed on him by the men who pull back in the studio, Van Dycks Sebastian series translated the mod-
his hands, bind his calves, or twist his head. If most history els passivity into an image of martyrdom in which the saints
painting is founded on the expressive poses of the heroic elegant stance bespeaks a violated autonomy.
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 181

Van Dycks representation of Sebastian as a model beautiful example from the twentieth century survives in the
wrenched into a pose offers a case study with which to test testimony of Gwen Johns model Jeanne Foster, who
previous arguments about the emergence of the artists described a sitting with the artist this way: She takes down
model as an iconographic motif. In an influential essay, Eliza- my hair and does it like her own . . . . she has me sit as she
beth Cropper showed that genre scenes from the mid-seven- does, and I feel the absorption of her personality as I sit.65
teenth century by the largely northern European painters A striking evolution in the appearance of the saint takes
known to their Italian critics as Bamboccianti built on analo- place over the course of Van Dycks Sebastian series. In the
gies between posing and violence to turn the realism of the earliest work, now in the Mus ee du Louvre, Paris, he retains
suffering model into a signifier for the realism of art.60 the stocky torso and ruddy cheeks of the Dublin model
These artists defied their idealist critics with studio scenes (Fig. 2).66 In the later paintings, this figure yields to one
that acknowledged the disorderly social space of art, and defined by slenderness and pallor, its contours further dis-
the submissive relationship between studio painter and suf- solved by dramatic spotlighting (Figs. 8, 1). Commentators
fering model.61 Such paintings capitalized on the scandal- on these later Sebastians have long acknowledged the suspi-
ous legacy of Caravaggio and the widely circulated tales cion that they may be self-portraits, only to back away from a
about his lowly models. Rather than refuting their critics definitive verdict.67 This reticence is surprising given the
lurid imagining of the Caravaggesque studio, the Bamboc- immediately obvious overlap between the features of the
cianti turned it into a defining motif of their art. saint and the self-portrait by Van Dyck that currently hangs
Christopher Wood, by contrast, has interpreted the alongside the two versions in Munichs Alte Pinakothek
appearance of the live model in genre scenes as an indication (Fig. 9).68 Nor is it anachronistic to see Van Dycks own like-
that modeling no longer posed a true threat to artistic hierar- ness in these paintings, given the currency of the proverb
chies.62 Wood describes artists who, instead of going out into ogni pittore dipinge s e (every painter paints himself), and
the world to draw, retreat to the closed circuit of the acad- the many disguised self-portraits of Van Dycks contemporar-
emy, where apprentices draw from drawings they have ies, among them Caravaggio and Guido Reni.69 A northern
made; they draw from a common model; and they even draw Italian tradition mingled the iconography of Saint Sebastian
each other drawing. In this reading, the systematization of with that of the martyrdom of love in images of beautiful
life drawing robbed [it] of much of its original drama and young men.70 Even before his departure for Italy, Van Dyck
erotic charge.63 The early modern studio may indeed have was consciously cultivating a Venetian sensibility, and in por-
been far less permeable to the outside world, far more of a traying himself as Saint Sebastian he may have had these
closed system, than popular notions of the Renaissance paintings in mind.71
would have us believe. But in their recourse to the model, Self-portraiture played a part in Van Dycks artistic produc-
artists still had at their disposal the means of breaking open, tion beginning in adolescence. In a very early painting now
or at least menacing, that system. Such an insurrection was in Vienna, Van Dyck turned his own likeness into the site of a
precisely what censorious critics perceived in the Carraccis performance of bravura brushwork.72 Later, in Italy, just as
insistence that the canons of art be, in Gail Feigenbaums apt he was concluding the Sebastian series, Van Dyck painted a
formulation, domesticated by the live model striking the self-portrait based on his study of Raphaels now-lost Portrait
celebrated pose anew.64 The outraged reception of the Car- of a Young Man, assimilating the history of art to his self-pre-
racci and Caravaggio, the horror inspired by the Bamboccianti, sentation as a fashionable gentleman on the streets of
and the strict regulation of the model at the state academies Rome.73 His regular production of self-portraits in paint and
all indicate that live modeling retained the threat of its origi- print would continue up to his death. Nor was the use of dis-
nal drama and erotic charge well into the so-called era of guised portraiture in the Sebastian series anomalous within
art. To these examples, we might add that of Van Dyck, who Van Dycks practice. According to Bellori, in an altarpiece
countered the idealist practice of Rubens with paintings that for the Beguines of Antwerp, Van Dyck made the
made explicit their origin in the work of the model. In the Magdalenes face a portrait of his own sister.74 He also used
Sebastian paintings, Van Dyck further raised the stakes by the likeness of the duchess of Havr e for the Virgin in a paint-
portraying that model as himself. ing of the latter adored by the abbe Scaglia.75 Van Dycks skill
as a portraitist permeated all aspects of his production, and
A Self-Portrait in the Studio he was clearly aware of the heightened appeal that disguised
The mingled eroticism and menace of Van Dycks Sebastian portraits could add to history paintings.
paintings, the saints oscillation across the series between Van Dycks self-depiction as Saint Sebastian, was, of course,
anguish and impassivity, align with the ambivalence about at variance with Counter-Reformation edicts against dis-
the model that runs through so much early modern art writ- guised portraits in devotional painting. Yet the evidence sug-
ing. This ambivalence is only heightened when we under- gests that the Sebastian paintings were intended for
stand the extent to which Van Dyck projected his own image domestic, not sacred, display, allowing their artist to take
on to the model before him. The popular conception of greater liberties. None of these paintings has a provenance
modeling emphasizes difference, the juxtaposition of a linking it to a church;76 instead, we encounter them in inven-
naked female body and a desiring male gaze. When, however, tory entries from private collections, like the large Saint
as was almost always the case in the early modern studio, Sebastian by A. van Dyck hanging in the constcamer, or collec-
model and painter are of the same sex, life study may be just tion, of the Antwerp painter Abraham Matthijs at his death in
as prone to call attention to likeness or resemblance. It 1649.77 Matthijss collection encompassed an impressive 342
affords opportunities for displaced self-portraiture. A paintings, as well as many drawings and prints. He owned a
182 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

promoted the autonomy of their art through the image of


themselves as authorial subjects.81 What is striking about Van
Dycks self-depiction in the Sebastian series, by contrast, is
that he represents himself not in the process of making, but
of being made, violently put into position by another man.
This emphasis on the models lack of agency becomes appar-
ent in the difference between the Dublin youth (Fig. 3) and
what is usually taken to be the last painting in the series,
painted sometime after Van Dycks arrival in Italy (Fig. 1).82
Despite the vulnerability of his nakedness and pose, the Dub-
lin youth stands in isolation. Nothing visibly forces him to
hold his position. The youths stancehands behind back,
feet turned out, head tiltedrecurs almost exactly in the
final Sebastian. But now the pose is no longer the result of
the models own will and exertion. Instead, two men impose
it on his body. One twists his head into place, while the other
binds his calves together. Just where we would expect to find
an image of the young artists agency, in his self-portrait, we
encounter instead his alarming passivity.
At first glance, Van Dycks self-representation as a victim
accords with one of the most curious anecdotes about his
early career. According to Bellori:

. . . as Rubens became aware that his pupil [Van Dyck] was


proceeding to usurp the credit for his colors and would
9 Anthony van Dyck, Self-Portrait, ca. 1620, oil on canvas, 32 shortly jeopardize his reputation, being a very shrewd
275/ 8 in. (82.5 70.2 cm). Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staats- man, he took his opportunity from some portraits that
gemaldesammlungen, Munich, 405 (artwork in the public Anthony painted and, acclaiming them with the highest
domain; photograph provided by BPK, Berlin / Alte
praises, proposed him in his stead to anyone who came to
Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY)
request portraits, in order to keep him from figures [per
rimuoverlo dalle figure].83
beautiful apostle head by Van Dyck and a youthful self-por-
trait by Rubens.78 Displayed alongside his Flemish paintings Bellori explains Van Dycks career as a portraitist in terms of
were many works attributed to the contemporary Bolognese a miseducation in the studio. He places the blame for Van
masters Domenichino, Guido Reni, and Albani, in addition Dycks squandered talents on his masters sly withholding of
to copies after Titian and Raphael. Promiscuously mingling access to figures, to be understood here broadly as commis-
profane and sacred subjects, Flemish and Italian painting, sions for history paintings and the life study they entailed.
older and contemporary art, Matthijss collection was the This anecdote stands at the head of a long tradition of
ideal setting for one of Van Dycks Sebastians, which adver- anguished speculation about the relation between Rubens
tised their young painters ambition by combining his self- and his most talented prot e.84 Yet the Sebastian series is
eg
portrait with sophisticated allusions to Italian traditions and exactly the kind of work we would not expect Van Dyck to
to the studio practice of posing the model. produce, given Belloris account. Each Sebastian is a history
Elizabeth Honig has written at length about Antwerp con- painting built around a monumental male nude. The surviv-
noisseurs like Matthijs and their delight in collaborative ing evidence furthermore indicates that, among Rubenss
works of art that invited them to exercise their knowledge in disciples, Van Dyck may have had privileged access to the
a setting of learned conversation, discerning one painters model.
hand from another.79 Another game of identification that The great studios of the seventeenth century left behind
these early collectors played was naming the models for vast numbers of drawings that represent a much-traversed
paintings. In seventeenth-century inventories, we encounter minefield for connoisseurs attempting to disentangle one
entries for a head study of Rubenss washerwoman or a individual artists hand from another or to sift out drawings
laughing tronie of Rubenss pigment grinder [painted] by truly made from life from those copied after prints or sculp-
Van Dyck.80 Whatever the accuracy of these identifications, ture. This material has provided scholars of the Carracci in
they attest to seventeenth-century beholders interest in the particular with a contested cottage industry.85 In the case of
lore of the studio and their desire for proximity to even the Rembrandts studio, specific group sessions with the model
humblest productions of Antwerps celebrated masters. can now be re-created with the aid of drawings by different
Within this context, a disguised self-portrait by Van Dyck artists that show the same model in the same pose, but viewed
would have acquired added piquancy. from a variety of angles.86 With Rubens and his disciples,
Art history of the last several decades has been awash in however, the situation is different. Rubens does not seem to
studies of self-portraiture, and influential accounts have have organized shared sessions with the model for his stu-
shown how artists from Albrecht D urer to Caravaggio dents. Indeed, in remarks recorded by Norgate, Rubens
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 183

dismissed the drawing academies of Italy, recalling that


divers of his nation had followed this Academicall course for
twenty Yeares together to little or noe purpose.87 Instead,
across the broad corpus of drawings by Rubens and his fol-
lowers, we trace a mise-en-abyme of the seminal encounter
between master and model, perpetuated over decades by
artists not originally present for it. These copyists drawings
recall the model books of the late Middle Ages more than
they do the academies of Rubenss contemporaries. Fittingly,
given what we know of Rubenss organization, this was a
more hierarchical mode of procuring and disseminating the
labor of the model, with the masters own drawing privileged
as the only work actually made in the models presence.
When young artists, notably Van Dyck and Jordaens, wished
to emerge from Rubenss authority, they literally and figura-
tively had to find their own models.
At the start of one such chain of emulation is a celebrated
black chalk drawing now in Rotterdam, made shortly after
Rubenss return from Italy (Fig. 10).88 Here, Rubens drew a
muscular man, perhaps another porter, who had gone down
on one knee as he strained to lift something. The model was
sketched from life, with Rubens adding in his models fore-
shortened right calf and foot to the side, almost as an after-
thought once he had run out of room on the page. The pose
also recalls such Roman sculptures as the Belvedere Torso
and the Arrotino. Over the next decade, Rubens monumen-
talized this sketch in paintings such as the Adoration of the
Magi for Antwerps town hall (now in the Museo del Prado,
Madrid) or the Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek (Mus ee des
Beaux-Arts, Caen). In a slightly altered pose, likely based on 10 Peter Paul Rubens, Study of a Kneeling Man, ca. 160910, black
a lost drawing from the same session, the same model slum- chalk, heightened with white, on paper, 20 153/ 8 in. (52
bers in the great Samson and Delilah (the National Gallery, 39 cm). Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, V 52
(artwork in the public domain; photograph by Studio Tromp,
London). Over time, this kneeling, brawny, bearded man
Rotterdam, provided by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
became a signature of Rubenss art. Just as they absorbed Rotterdam, Loan Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
other elements of his style, Rubenss followers took up this Foundation [Collection Koenigs])
model and his pose. As late as 1650, he appeared in direct
citation in Jordaenss Christ Driving the Money Changers from the
Temple (Musee du Louvre, Paris) Prado, Madrid).92 But when, in his final painting for the
In launching their reform of art, the Carracci used live Sebastian series, the canvas now in Munich (Fig. 1), Van
models to test and revise the legacy of the High Renaissance. Dyck needed to depict a henchman who squats down to bind
With much greater proximity to the precedent of their mas- the legs of the saint, he combined elements of both his own
ter, Rubenss own disciples also had recourse to the model in and Rubenss drawings of the kneeling man. This direct cita-
formulating their independent artistic idioms. A problematic tion of the master physically overlaps the luminous, lissome
group of drawingsvariously attributed either to Jacob Jor- saint, who is both a self-portrait and a marker of the emer-
daens or Arnout Vinckenborch and now dispersed across sev- gence of Van Dycks own mature style.
eral German collectionsdepicts a similar, but not identical, There is reason to believe, despite Belloris anecdote, that
model to that in the Rotterdam drawinga mature, muscu- it was Rubens who initially set Van Dyck to working from the
lar, bearded man, who assumes a variety of positions.89 In live model in the service of the older artists larger operation.
one sheet, now in D usseldorf, he adopts almost the exact As noted above, head studies by Van Dyck were in Rubenss
pose as in the Rotterdam drawing, but with legs reversed and collection and were probably made on his commission;
viewed from two angles (Fig. 11). The artist of these drawings drawn studies securely attributed to Van Dyck were used in
seems to have sought out a model of Rubensian proportions paintings just as securely attributed to Rubens.93 Evidence
and had him strike poses known from the masters paintings, suggests that the Dublin study (Fig. 3), the likely point of
so that the student might internalize them himself.90 Some- departure for the Sebastian series, was also owned by Rubens
thing analogous happened in another drawing in Rotterdam, and may even have been made at his behest. Prompting this
one of the most beautiful examples of Van Dycks early conclusion is a drawing from the so-called Rubens Cantoor in
draftsmanship (Fig. 12).91 Here, yet another Herculean Copenhagen, a large group of copies after Rubens and Van
model falls on his right knee and displays a broad expanse of Dyck produced within the Rubens workshop at the end of
back. Van Dyck used the drawing most immediately as a study the 1620s (Fig. 13).94 The work of multiple hands, the Can-
for his Crowning with Thorns of about 161821 (Museo del toor drawings attest to the rote transmission of prototypes in
184 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

11 Attributed to Jacob Jordaens or Arnout Vinckenborch, Studies


of a Kneeling Man, ca. 1620, black and red chalk, heightened with
white, and gray and brown wash, on paper, 155/ 8 11 in. (39.6
28 cm). Museum KunstpalastSammlung Kunstakademie,
Dusseldorf, KA(FP)4953 (artwork in the public domain;
photograph Stiftung Museum KunstpalastHorst Kolberg
ARTOTHEK)

12 Anthony van Dyck, Study of a Kneeling Man, ca. 161820,


Rubenss studio, where works by both Rubens and Van Dyck black, red, and yellow chalk, heightened with white, on paper,
were copied as tools of instruction and sources for larger 181/ 4 105/ 8 in. (46.3 27 cm). Museum Boijmans Van
compositions. In one drawing from this group, a copyist Beuningen, Rotterdam, MB 341 (PK) (artwork in the public
domain; photograph by Studio Buitenhof, The Hague, provided
appears to have faithfully transcribed the figure from Dublin,
by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)
devoting only cursory attention to his head and facial expres-
sion. Yet a comparison of such passages as the pectoral
muscles or calves reveals the extent to which the copyist, con- rather than keep[ing] him from figures, as Bellori
sciously or not, assimilated Van Dycks unsparing study to a claimed, Rubens would have initially devoted Van Dycks
sculptural ideal. In other words, he has put Van Dycks proto- talents to them.
type through the canonical filter that students were to A different source gives us a more precise picture of Van
acquire through their study of casts and engravings, long Dycks status in Rubenss studio and indicates why he might
before they ever saw a live model. have turned at this moment from history paintings like the
It is within this context that the anomalous scale and fin- Sebastian series to a career built around portraiture. In a let-
ish of the Dublin canvas begin to make sense. It was not a ter dated to 1620, Francesco Vercellini, an Italian member of
shorthand notation, meant for Van Dycks own use, but, the household of the Earl and Countess of Arundel,
instead, a fully worked-out demonstration piece from which describes a visit that Lady Arundel made to Rubenss house
younger or less gifted artists might learn. If Van Dycks in Antwerp, where she sat for a portrait by the master.
workshop at the Dom van Ceulen was indeed an annex of
Rubenss operation, one of its primary functions may have On my arrival in this city, I at once presented the letter of
been to make preparatory works from the live model. This your Excellency to Signor Rubens the painter, which he
would accord with the decline in Rubenss own production received with a joyful countenance. But after having read
of such pieces at the end of the 1610s. In this reading, it, he displayed yet more pleasure, and made me this reply:
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 185

Although I have refused to paint the portraits of many


princes and gentlemen . . . yet I cannot refuse the Earl the
honour he does me in commanding [one from] me, hold-
ing him for one of the four evangelists, and a supporter of
our art. . . . Signor Rubens has promised my lady not to
take the portrait of any person whatever, except such as
are ordered by your Excellency. Van Dyck is still with
Signor Rubens, and his works are hardly less esteemed
than those of his master.95

The Vercellini letter paints a vivid picture of the courtly


negotiation that attended portrait sittings and that Van Dyck
observed as a young man in Rubenss studio. Sittings pre-
sented artists with a startling reversal of the power dynamics
between models and masters outlined above. Like sessions
with a hired model, portraits entailed the intrusion of an out-
sider into the studio, but this time an outsider whose author-
ity rivaled the artists.96 Lady Arundels arrival at Rubenss
house recast the painter as a vassal in a hierarchical chain in
which he occupied at best a middling position. This encoun-
ter resulted in a portrait that was not the fruit of solitary
invention but, rather, a testimony of the artists relation to a
social superior.
Throughout his career, Rubens accompanied an active
portrait practice with disavowals of interest in the genre;
he likewise claimed a reluctance to furnish friends and
patrons with the self-portraits they desired.97 Similar dis-
avowals have come down to us from such contemporaries
as Guido Reni and Nicolas Poussin.98 Predictably, idealist
critics applied much the same rhetoric to portraiture as
they did to work from the live model, seeing it as a dis-
traction from the noble practice of imitation and inven-
tion. In the words of Joanna Woodall, a hostile, dualist
conception of portraiture emerged in academic discourse
of this period, which conceived of portrait sittings as a
combat between the artistic ambitions of the painter and
the vanity of the sitter.99 So why did Van Dyckhardly
less esteemed than Rubens in Vercellinis phrase, eager
to become famous in Bellorischoose this moment to
become a portraitist?100
In his early history paintings, with their disguised portraits
13 Attributed to Willem Panneels, Nude Youth (after Van Dyck),
and physiognomic realism, Van Dyck had embraced the ca. 1628, black and white chalk on paper, 101/ 4 53/ 8 in. (25.9
models contribution to the finished work of art; he took this 13.7 cm). Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, KKSGB7777
a step further in the Sebastian series, where the posing of the (artwork in the public domain; photograph SMK Photo)
model nearly eclipses the ostensible subject of the saints
martyrdom. Van Dycks art, much to his critics dismay, was Regarding his method of painting, he was in the habit of
always built on intersubjective encounter, and he readily working alla prima, and when he made portraits he would
invited patrons into the studio. In fact, Van Dycks mature begin them early in the morning and, working without
portrait practice interwove the production of actual paintings interruption, would ask his sitters to have lunch with him.
with his skill as a courtier. He provided patrons not only with Even important people and great ladies came to him will-
portraits and self-portraits but also with what one high-born ingly as though for pleasure, attracted by the variety of the
sitter recalled as the Blessinge off your Coumpanye, & entertainments. After the meal he would return to the pic-
Sweetnes of Conversation.101 Sittings that other painters ture, or else paint two in a day, finishing them with some
perceived as invasions of the autonomous space of the studio retouching later.102
became for Van Dyck carefully choreographed events that
only reinforced his mastery. Roger de Piles goes into even greater detail:
Two extensive accounts of Van Dycks British portrait prac-
tice survive, recorded by early biographers who knew the The painter gave the day and hour to the persons whom
painters sitters. According to Bellori: he had to paint, and never worked more than an hour at a
186 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

time on a portrait, whether it be to sketch it out or to fin- Poorter writes, The goal he had probably set himselfto
ish it; and when his clock told him that the hour was up, become a successful history painter like Rubens and the cele-
he would rise and bow to the person to indicate that that brated Italianswas overly ambitious. Instead, he found a
was enough for one day, and would make an appointment path [portraiture] that was perfectly suited to his exceptional
for another day and another hour: after which his valet talent.109 The unquestioning acceptance of the academic
came to clean his brushes and prepare another palette, hierarchy of genresand their relevance to the decision
while he received the next person to whom he had given making of a young painter in early seventeenth-century Ant-
an appointment. He worked thus at several portraits dur- werphas obscured the ambition of Van Dycks approach to
ing the same day with extraordinary swiftness.103 portraiture. Treating the artist as the passive victim of either
Rubenss eminence or his own intellectual inadequacy, schol-
According to these biographers, Van Dycks mature portrait arship has lost sight of the highly conscious choice Van Dyck
practice consistently blurred the lines between paying sitter made to build his art around the model.
and hired model. De Piles says, With respect to the hands,
he had in his studio hired persons of one or the other sex Lives of the Models
who served him as models.104 Bellori writes that Van Dyck We gain a fleeting picture of Van Dycks models from an affi-
kept men and women to serve as models for the portraits of davit he drew up in Palermo in 1625, in an attempt to recover
lords and ladies when, after achieving the likeness of the a set of head studies that had been stolen by a former servant.
face, he would then complete the rest from live models.105 (This theft in itself yields further evidence of the value of
Throughout Van Dycks career, work from the hired model such works.) Van Dyck describes the heads both by referring
and work for the paying sitter were two sides of the same to their iconography and by naming their models:
coin.
In his highly scripted production of portraits during his a head of a young man named Baldassaro with black curly
English period, Van Dyck triumphantly negotiated the vexed hair, a head of Simone disguised as a woman, a head of a
dynamics of the portrait sitting that Rubens had largely sailor, a head of St. Peter, a head of a woman with sparse
sought to avoid. Van Dycks sittings were as ritualized as hair, a head of Lucia with the firm chest, a satirical head
princely audiences, and the formulaic nature of the portraits of a reader and a head shouting with mouth open.110
that resulted has obscured the innovations of his practice.
Baldassaro, Simone, Luciathe names of Van Dycks models
The diffusion of Van Dycks compositional types throughout
flash momentarily across the historical record, only to vanish
Europe is well known, but the legacy of his working method
again. However interested seventeenth-century Antwerp col-
and public persona has been less acknowledged.106 In fact,
lectors may have been in the identities of models, most mod-
Van Dycks manipulation of the portrait sitting to assert his
ern scholarship has been content with their oblivion,
mastery would have a profound effect on the further trajec-
consigning such speculation to the imagination of the lay
tory of European portraiture, influencing artists even as visu-
beholder. At the beginning of Helds conclusive attribution
ally different from Van Dyck as Rembrandt, whose works
to Rubens of one of the most famous head studies, that of a
offer a striking alternative to Van Dycks manner.107
black man viewed in four positions (Fig. 4), the scholar
The characteristic aesthetic of Van Dycks mature portraits,
wrote:
instantly recognizable on the walls of museums all over the
world, had its origins in the Sebastian paintings. In them, Nave beholders apparently had no difficulty recognizing
Van Dyck broke decisively with the rubicund fleshiness so immediately the truthethnically and artisticallyof this
characteristic of Rubens to propose a different canon of study from life. There is something compelling about the
beauty whose hallmarks were slenderness, pallor, and lan- psychological variety of expression depicted in what
guid self-possession. These were qualities of Van Dycks own clearly was the same individual (one wonders what he may
body that he promoted in self-portraits and that would in have been in life), ranging from a seemingly cheerful
turn define his aristocratic likenesses. Interestingly, this aes- smile, to a state of serene calm, and, in the most striking
thetic shift also marked the end of Van Dycks emulation of of the views, a tense pathos reminding us movingly of the
Caravaggio. Beginning during his Italian sojourn, Van Dycks traditional roles assigned to the members of his race.111
allegiance to work from life would express itself in the cen-
trality of portraiture to his art, but his history paintings were One wonders what he may have been in life. Deftly bracket-
less and less defined by the frisson of physiognomic realism. ing such speculation within a parenthetical aside, Held ges-
Like Caravaggios, Van Dycks fame would always go hand tures toward the pathos of the image while retaining his
in hand with a certain lack of critical prestige. In an assess- authority as an objective connoisseur. Held implies here that
ment that has been repeated for centuries, Bellori wrote, the history of the model is irrecoverable and, with it, his role
[Van Dyck] achieved the highest esteem for his portraits, in in the making of the masterpiece. The work of art history is
which he was peerless, and sometimes as marvelous as Titian to name the master.
himself. In istorie, however, he did not show himself to be In recent years, one trend has made an important break
competent and secure in disegno, nor did he carry out his with this position. Feminist scholars, working primarily on
work according to a perfect idea. . . .108 Bellori saw Van nineteenth-century painting, have unearthed a few of the lost
Dycks production of portraits as symptomatic of an intellec- histories of female models and critiqued the key role played
tual deficit, and subsequent scholars have rarely disagreed. by the figure of the woman model in Realist fiction and in
In the catalogue raisonn e of 2004, for example, Nora De allegories of artistic creation.112 Likewise, writers on early
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 187

modern art have assembled important case studies of women


who sat for painters and sculptors.113 But this welcome correc-
tive to narratives of male artistic autonomy has had the unin-
tended effect of treating modeling by one man for another
the practice that entirely dominated European art until the
nineteenth centuryas a mere unproblematic foil.114
Time and again, historical accounts refer to the scarcity of
female models in actual studio practice only then to dwell on
their literary depictions or the few oft-cited cases in which
prostitutes are known to have posed for artists.115 Within the
Rubens literature, there is a pervasive fascination with the
role of the artists second wife, Helena Fourment, as a muse
and model.116 The only previous extended discussion of Van
Dyck and his models likewise circles around images of the
courtesan Margaret Lemon.117 Early modern art writers were
interested as well in the studio as a site of illicit heterosexual
encounter, a fantasy that came with a classical pedigree in
the form of Plinys tale of Apelles and Campaspe.118
(It should be pointed out that Plinys anecdote, like the
many paintings after it, actually concerns a portrait sitting
and not a session with a hired model.) When it came to evok-
ing the real studio practice of modeling, though, seven-
teenth-century authors were just as likely to cite Parrhasius
and his unnamed slave, to view the encounter between
model and artist as a confrontation between two men, and to
juxtapose the artists desire for a beautiful body with the
models boredom, terror, or aching limbs. Certainly, male
models were also vulnerable to sexual violence. On Septem-
ber 28, 1654, for example, the sculptor Hi eronymus Duques-
noy the Younger was burned at the stake in Ghent, accused
of raping two boys who had modeled for him.119
A great deal of the resistance to acknowledging Van Dycks
disguised self-portraits and his identification with the model
stems from the blind spot for the labor of male models. It
also has to do with the neglect of homoeroticism and male 14 Peter Paul Rubens, Saint Sebastian, ca. 1614, oil on canvas,
783/ 4 503/ 8 in. (200 128 cm). Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche
beauty in early modern Netherlandish art more generally. Museen zu Berlin, 798H (artwork in the public domain;
Van Dycks reputation has always suffered from the percep- photograph by J org P. Anders, provided by BPK, Berlin /
tion of the artist as an enervated, feminized other to Gemaldegalerie, Berlin / Art Resource, NY)
Rubens,120 yet in the decade since it was issued, Mari et West-
ermanns suggestion that scholars reassess Van Dyck from
the perspective of gender and identity has gone almost On April 28, 1618, two months after Van Dyck had attained
entirely unheeded.121 The appropriation of Saint Sebastian the status of an independent master, Rubens wrote one of his
and his iconography by queer artists of the nineteenth and most famous letters.124 In it, he offered a group of paintings
twentieth centuries should not tempt us into speculation to Sir Dudley Carleton, English ambassador to The Hague, in
about Van Dycks own sexuality.122 However, there is nothing exchange for a collection of antique statuary. In describing
anachronistic about asserting that the beautiful male body the works, Rubens indicated the degree to which he himself
played a central role in the early modern studio, and that was responsible for their execution. Some of the paintings
young artists like Van Dyck and Guido Reni understood this were entirely by my own hand, while others had been made
and used it to their advantage. in collaboration or were the work of Rubenss followers and
We also cannot ignore the physical dimension that artistic only retouched by the master. Among the autograph works
rivalry often acquired in this period, played out in mens vio- was a nude Saint Sebastian, which Rubens valued at three
lence against one another. Caravaggios conflicts with other hundred florins.125 Based on its dimensions, this work has
artists are notorious, but Rubens also faced an attempt on his been identified with the Rubens Sebastian now in Berlin
life from his resentful engraver Lucas Vorsterman, whom (Fig. 14).126
Van Dyck would later portray.123 Such episodes are normally In this painting, Rubens isolates the S-curve of the
read through the lens of psychobiography, but they attest to saints body against a troubled sky, with only a glimpse of
a culture in which professional resentments among men light above the horizon on the lower right to contrast
could easily boil over in the form of assaults or even murders. with the supernatural illumination of the central figure.
The Sebastian paintings provide a vision of the studio Sebastians musculature, heightened with chiaroscuro,
inflected with these dynamics of rivalry and exploitation. insistently recalls Rubenss study of antique sculptures,
188 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

such as those for which he hoped to trade the painting, vulnerability within the studio. In the vicissitudes of his
while the composition itself is a direct citation of Andrea reception, Van Dycks sense of his imperiled position
Mantegna.127 More iconic than narrative, Rubenss paint- between master and model would prove all too astute.
ing announces his vision of the heroic male body. The
degree to which he based that body on the study of a live
modelas opposed to the history of artcannot be deter- Adam Eaker is the Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at the Frick Col-
mined from the finished work itself. lection, where he is currently organizing an exhibition of Anthony
By contrast, in the last painting of Van Dycks Sebastian van Dyck s portraits. A doctoral candidate at Columbia University,
series, now in Munich, the artist shifts the saints body he is completing a dissertation entitled Lore of the Studio: Van
slightly left of center to make room for a new cast of char- Dyck, Rubens, and the Status of Portraiture [The Frick Collection,
acters (Fig. 1). There is the leathery, aged executioner 1 East 70th Street, New York, N.Y. 10021, eaker@frick.org].
who pushes down the martyrs head and the younger
henchman who binds his calves together. There are three
soldiers in armor and a young boy, a rearing horse and a
dog that paws at the saints discarded breastplate. Notes
Whereas Rubens portrayed the aftermath of the saints This project began in an independent study with my adviser, David Freed-
martyrdom, with Sebastian isolated in extremis, Van Dyck berg, whose guidance has been invaluable throughout its development. The
bulk of the research and writing occurred during a year as a visiting scholar
depicts the hurried, hectic build-up to the scene, as vari- cohosted by the Rubenianum and the University of Antwerps Department of
ous men collaborate on their gruesome task. The work of History, funded by a grant from the Belgian American Educational Founda-
these men is to pose the saint, to wrench him into the tion; I am deeply grateful to the staff of all three institutions for their unstint-
ing support. For reading and commenting on the manuscript at various
beautiful form that appears to be so natural in Rubenss stages, I would also like to thank Kirk Ambrose, Michael Cole, Aaron Hyman,
Berlin Sebastian. Replacing isolation with collaboration, a Fronia W. Simpson, Allison Stielau, Bert Watteeuw, and the two anonymous
readers for The Art Bulletin. Earlier iterations of the article were presented at a
scene of heroism with one of mundane preparation, Van panel organized by Gail Feigenbaum and Anne Woollett for the Renaissance
Dyck reintroduced the studio to his painting. Society of Americas annual conference in 2013, and to the Palet working
In his letter to Carleton, Rubens conceded that only some group of art history students at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Vrije Uni-
versiteit Brussel, and Universiteit Gent. Unless otherwise noted, all transla-
of the works issuing from his studio were entirely by his tions are my own.
hand, while others were paintings by his assistants that he
1. On the Sebastian series, see especially Gustav Gl uck, Van Dycks
had merely retouched. Ideally, however, these distinctions Anfange: Der heilige Sebastian im Louvre zu Paris, in Rubens, Van Dyck,
were invisible to the innocent eye, and only Rubenss candor und ihr Kreis (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1933), 27588; Colin Thompson,
Van Dyck: Variations on the Theme of St. Sebastian (Edinburgh: National
revealed them to his potential buyer. As commodities, Gallery of Scotland, 1975); and John Rupert Martin, Van Dycks Early
Rubenss paintings disguised the means of their production Paintings of St. Sebastian, in Art, the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H.
to maintain their allure. This was a notion of the studio and W. Janson, ed. Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York:
Harry N. Abrams; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 393400.
of authorship that Van Dyck would readily adopt, perhaps as
2. For an overview of Saint Sebastians cult and iconography, see Karim
early as the Dom van Ceulen workshop and certainly in his Ressouni-Demigneaux, The Imaginary Life of Saint Sebastian, in The
English practice. Yet in the Sebastian paintings he called Agony and the Ecstasy: Guido Reni s Saint Sebastians, ed. Piero Boccardo
and Xavier F. Salomon (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2008), 1732.
attention to precisely those dynamics of male collaboration,
3. Thompson, Van Dyck: Variations on the Theme of St. Sebastian, 2.
centered on the figure of the suffering model, that Rubenss
4. Martin, Van Dycks Early Paintings, 399.
paintings sought to conceal.
5. For excellent overviews of the sources forand current knowledge of
The study of Flemish Baroque painting, particularly as Rubenss studio, see Arnout Balis, Fatto da un mio discepolo:
embodied in the monumental work of the Corpus Rubenia- Rubenss Studio Practices Reviewed, in Rubens and His Workshop: The
Flight of Lot and His Family from Sodom, ed. Toshiharu Nakamura (Tokyo:
num, now in its sixth decade, continues to circle around ques- National Museum of Western Art, 1994), 97128; and idem, Rubens
tions of attribution, sifting through paintings along much the and His Studio: Defining the Problem, in Rubens: A Genius at Work
same lines as Rubenss letter to Carleton. The ultimate effect (Brussels: Royal Museums of Fine Arts, 2008), 3051.
6. Max Rooses and Charles Ruelens, Correspondance de Rubens et documents
of this work of connoisseurship has been less to reconstruct e pistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres (Antwerp: Jos. Maes, 1898), vol. 2,
the studio and its individual participants than to quarantine 35: . . . sommighe voor etlycke jaren by ander meesters haer onderhou-
the autograph productions of a singular master. Even in den om myn commoditeyt te verwachten. . . . Voorts mach ic segghen
met der waerheyt sonder eenich hyperbole dat ic over die hondert
scholarship ostensibly devoted to Van Dyck, emphasis hebbe moeten refuseren. English translation in Ruth Saunders
remains on the disciples shortcomings as measured against Magurn, ed. and trans., The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), 55 (translation modified).
the standard set by Rubens; along distinctly Bellorian lines,
7. For an overview of the current state of knowledge about Van Dycks early
these writers reduce Van Dycks triumph as a portraitist to a career, see Friso Lammertse and Alejandro Vergara, A Portrait of Van
mere act of compensation. But Van Dyck was not naive. He Dyck as a Young Artist, in The Young Van Dyck, ed. Lammertse and Ver-
knew that Rubens had provided him with both a powerful gara (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2012), 2374. I am grateful to
the curators of this exhibition for including me in a study day at which I
example of an artistic career and its economic organization. was able to present my preliminary research on the painting of the youth
He also knew that this organization all but ensured the ano- in Dublin.
nymity of the masters many collaborators. In the Sebastian 8. The five autograph versions, as well as a number of copies, are listed in
Susan J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New
series, Van Dyck boldly asserted his command of history Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), cat. nos. I.44, I.47, I.48, II.17, II.18.
painting and the nude, of Venetian tradition and an aes- Martin, Van Dycks Early Paintings, describes the three variations.
thetic canon whose tenets were a point-by-point refutation of 9. For the literature on the painting, see Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 62, cat. no.
I.46. I am grateful to Adriaan Waiboer and Victor Laing of the National
Rubenss art. At the same time, the young artist portrayed Gallery of Ireland for making it possible for me to examine the painting
himself as a martyred model to allegorize his own in person.
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 189

10. Giovan Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Archi- 25. Galesloot, Un proce s, 39: hem gesien hebbende schilderen aen
tects: A New Translation and Critical Edition, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl, eenen apostel die geschildert was naer Peeter de Jode saliger mynen
ed. Hellmut Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 179: oom waer oppe hij attestant seyde wie maeckt ghij daer, waerop de
Moving to Rome, [Caravaggio] lived there without fixed lodgings and voorseyde van Dyck antwoordde ick sal der wel eenen frayen apostel
without provisions, for models, without which he did not know how to afmaecken.
paint, proved too costly for him, and he was not earning enough to 26. Caroline Joubert, Alexis Merle du Bourg, and Nico Van Hout, eds., Jacob
cover his expenses. Ibid., 218 (emphasis added): [Van Dyck] rivaled Jordaens et son mode le Abraham Grapheus (Caen: Mus
ee des Beaux-Arts,
the magnificence of Parrhasius, keeping servants, carriages, horses, play- 2012); and idem, Abraham Grapheus: Model van Jacob Jordaens (Ghent:
ers, musicians, and jesters, and with these entertainments he played host Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2012).
to all the great personages, knights and ladies, who came daily to have
their portraits painted at his house. Moreover, when they stayed on, he 27. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 72, cat. no. I.55.
would provide the most sumptuous repasts for them at his table, at a cost 28. Ibid., 78, cat. no. I.73
of thirty scudi a day; this will seem incredible to anyone accustomed to 29. Ibid., 47, cat. no. I.31; for the paintings provenance, see Jeffrey M.
our Italian frugality but not to those familiar with foreign countries, con- Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector (Princeton: Princeton University
sidering how many people he fed. For in addition to those mentioned, he kept Press, 1989), 135.
men and women to serve as models for the portraits of lords and ladies when, after
achieving the likeness of the face, he would then complete the rest from live 30. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 44, cat. no. I.28 (Descent of the Holy Spirit); and
models. ibid., 83, cat. no. I.83 (Silenus).
11. For Rubenss interest in Caravaggio, see Jeremy Wood, Corpus Rubenia- 31. Van Dyck: A Loan Exhibition of Pictures and Sketches (London: Thos. Agnew
num Ludwig Burchard XXVI: Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and and Sons, 1968), 12.
Later Artists, vol. 1, Italian Artists: Raphael and His School (London: Harvey 32. For the birthdates of these three men, see Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 16.
Miller, 2010), 11320.
33. Rudie van Leeuwen, The Portrait Historie in Religious Context and Its
12. Bellori, The Lives, 205. Condemnation, in Pokerfaced: Flemish and Dutch Baroque Faces Unveiled,
13. Anne-Marie Logan, Peter Paul Rubens as a Draftsman, in Peter Paul ed. Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Hannelore Magnus, and Bert Watteeuw
Rubens: The Drawings, ed. Logan and Michiel C. Plomp (New York: Met- (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 10924; on the tradition of disguised por-
ropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 336. traits in Antwerp devotional painting, see also Koenraad Jonckheere,
Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm: Experiments in Decorum, 15661585 (Brussels:
14. On the workings of Floriss studio, see Carl van de Velde, Frans Floris Mercator, 2012), 12867.
(1519/201570): Leven en werken (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor
Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgi e, 1975), 99 34. Anne Summerscale, trans. and ed., Malvasia s Life of the Carracci: Com-
119. mentary and Translation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2000), 294.
15. Karel van Mander: The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German
Painters. . . . , ed. and trans. Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994), 35. Bellori, The Lives, 180. For a discussion of the social status of
vol. 1, 242v: Brenght daer te pas sulcke en sulcke tronien: want hy daer Caravaggios models, see Todd P. Olson, The Street Has Its Masters:
een goet deel op Penneelen altyt by hem hadde. Caravaggio and the Socially Marginal, in Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion,
Reception, ed. Genevieve Warwick (Newark: University of Delaware Press,
16. Van de Velde, Frans Floris, 6578. 2006), 6981.
17. On the use of the head study in Rubenss studio, see especially Justus 36. On Caravaggios method of working from the model, see Keith Chris-
Muller Hofstede, Zur Kopfstudie im Werk von Rubens, Wallraf-Richartz tiansen, Caravaggio and Lesempio davanti del naturale, Art Bulletin
Jahrbuch 30 (1968): 22352; Julius S. Held, Einige Bemerkungen zum 68, no. 3 (September 1986): 42145.
Problem der Kopfstudie in der flamischen Malerei, Wallraf-Richartz
Jahrbuch 32 (1970): 28590; and idem, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul 37. Summerscale, Malvasia s Life of the Carracci, 120.
Rubens: A Critical Catalogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 38. Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chi-
1980), vol. 1, 597614. cago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 3839.
18. J. Denuce, ed., De Antwerpsche Konstkamers : Inventarissen van kunstverza- 39. Catherine Enggass and Robert Enggass, trans. and eds., Malvasia: The
melingen te Antwerpen in de 16e en 17e eeuwen (The Hague: Martinus Nij- Life of Guido Reni (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
hoff, 1932), 70: Een menigte van tronien of koppen naer tleven, op 1980), 40.
doek en pineel, zoo door Mijn heer Rubens als door Mijn heer van Dyck.
40. Ibid., 47.
19. Held, The Oil Sketches, 597.
41. Malvasia writes (ibid., 107): From the very beautiful and majestic head
20. Max Rooses and Charles Ruelens, eds., Correspondance de Rubens et docu- of a woman with a turban, generally called the girl with the eggs, in the
ments e pistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres (Antwerp: J.-E. Buschmann, painting dealing with the Life of St. Benedict in the famous courtyard [S.
1909), vol. 6, 22; English translation in Magurn, The Letters, 410. Michele in Bosco], we can see what Reni looked like, since as he said
21. This testimony was first transcribed and published in M. L. Galesloot, Un many times in that figure he portrayed himself at an early age.
proce s pour une vente de tableaux attribue s a Antoine Van Dyck (Brussels: 42. Bellori, The Lives, 171; original in Giovan Pietro Bellori, Le vite de pittori,
Librairie C. Muquardt, 1868). scultori e architetti moderni, ed. Evelina Borea (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 205.
22. The crux of the debate regarding the Dom van Ceulen and the apostle 43. Giovanni Battista Passeri, quoted in Patrizia Cavazzini, Painting as Busi-
portraits is whether the paintings should be dated to the very beginning ness in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome (University Park: Pennsylvania State
of Van Dycks career, about 161516, or just before his departure for University Press, 2008), 185 n. 185: uno dei modelli migliori per lo spi-
Italy in 1621, and whether the testimony of the 166062 trial is reliable rito che dava allattitudini nelle quali veniva posto.
evidence for their dating. Margaret Roland, building on the work of
44. Bellori, The Lives, 60; original in Bellori, Le vite, 20.
Gustav Gl uck, made a convincing argument for the later date (Roland,
Van Dycks Early Workshop, the Apostle Series, and the Drunken 45. The classic history of these academies is Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of
Silenus, Art Bulletin 66, no. 2 [June 1984]: 21133), but this argument Art: Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940). As
was subsequently undermined by the archival discoveries of Katlijne Van Pevsner notes, the term academy had a variety of meanings in the early
der Stighelen (Van der Stighelen, Young Anthony: Archival Discoveries modern period. In this essay, I use the term state-sponsored academies
Relating to Van Dycks Early Career, in Van Dyck 350, ed. Susan J. to distinguish those institutions that had the force of the crown or state
Barnes and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. [Washington, D.C.: National Gallery behind them from the more informal drawing academies formed by
of Art, 1994], 1748). I support the view of Nora De Poorter (in Barnes such figures as Andrea Sacchi in Rome. See also Anton W. A. Boschloo,
et al., Van Dyck, 6770) that, On the evidence of the extant panels and ed., Academies of Art: Renaissance to Romanticism (The Hague: SDU, 1989).
the testimony of 16601, it seems an oversimplification to assume that 46. Pevsner, Academies of Art, 87.
clearly distinguishable series were produced one after the other. My
47. Cavazzini, Painting as Business, 77.
impression is that Van Dyck painted apostle figures from life over a
number of years, perhaps 1618 to 1620. These served as models for his 48. Quoted in F. J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Academie van Antwerpen
history pieces as well as the apostles being prototypes that could be repli- (Antwerp: J.-E. Buschmann, 1867), 112: in cas hy het selve quame te
cated either by himself or his assistants. swygen, dat deselve model in stantelyck [sic] sal worden gecasseert.
23. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 67. 49. Paul Freart de Chantelou, Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini s Visit to France, ed.
George C. Bauer, trans. Margery Corbett (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
24. On the influence of Flemish tronies on the Leiden painters, see Dagmar
sity Press, 1985), 3536.
Hirschfelder, Tronie und Portra t in der niederl
a ndischen Malerei des 17. Jahr-
hunderts (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2008), 5571; and Franziska Gott- 50. For earlier examples of the porter trope in Leon Battista Alberti and
wald, Das Tronie: Muster, Studie und Meisterwerk (Berlin: Deutscher Lodovico Dolce, see David Young Kim, The Horror of Mimesis, Oxford
Kunstverlag, 2011), 93102. Art Journal 34, no. 3 (October 2011): 349 n. 55.
190 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 2

51. Summerscale, Malvasia s Life of the Carracci, 93. 79. Elizabeth Honig, The Beholder as Work of Art: A Study in the Location
52. Edward Norgate, Miniatura, or, The Art of Limning: New Critical Edition, of Value in Seventeenth-Century Flemish Painting, Nederlands Kunst-
ed. Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell (New Haven: Yale University Press, historisch Jaarboek 46 (1995): 25397.
1997), 108. 80. Quoted in Nico Van Hout, Tronies: Over het gebruik van karakter-
53. Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 10.5; for a discussion of the text, see koppen in de Vlaamse historieschilderkunst, in Joubert et al. Abra-
Helen Morales, The Torturers Apprentice: Parrhasius and the Limits ham Grapheus: Model van Jacob Jordaens, 63: Een Vrouwentronie
of Art, in Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas Elsner (Cambridge: geweest hebbende soo geseght wirt de Wasgersse van den schilder
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 182209. The anecdotes currency in Rubbens; een lachende tronie den Vrijver van Rubbens van Van
seventeenth-century art theory is discussed in Elizabeth Cropper, The Dijck.
u sseldorf Notebook (Princeton: Princeton
Ideal of Painting: Pietro Testa s D 81. Representative and influential studies include H. Perry Chapman, Rem-
University Press, 1984), 163. brandt s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton:
54. Jonathan Richardson, Two Discourses: I. An Essay on the Whole Art of Criti- Princeton University Press, 1990); Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of
cism, as It Relates to Painting. . . . II. An Argument in Behalf of the Science of a Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago
Connoisseur. . . . (London: W. Churchill, 1719), 89. Press, 1993); Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The
Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven:
55. Kim, The Horror of Mimesis. Yale University Press, 1998); and Michael Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio
56. Ibid., 34748. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
57. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 6365, cat. nos. I.47, I.48. 82. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 163, cat. no. II.18.
58. Julius S. Held, Van Dycks Relationship to Rubens, in Barnes and 83. Bellori, The Lives, 21516; original in Bellori, Le vite, 272.
Wheelock, Van Dyck 350, 73. 84. For a summary of the traditional views and evidence, see Held, Van
59. On the centrality of the wax or clay model to the creation of Mannerist Dycks Relationship to Rubens, 6378.
forms, see Michael Cole, The Figura Sforzata: Modelling, Power and the 85. For contrasting accounts of the Carraccis practice of life drawing, see
Mannerist Body, Art History 24, no. 4 (September 2001): 52051. Carl Goldstein, Visual Fact over Verbal Fiction: A Study of the Carracci and the
60. Elizabeth Cropper, Michelangelo Cerquozzis Self-Portrait: The Real Criticism, Theory, and Practice of Art in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cam-
Studio and the Suffering Model, in Ars naturam adiuvans: Festschrift f
ur bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Feigenbaum, Practice
Matthias Winner, ed. Victoria von Fleming and Sebastian Sch
utze (Mainz: in the Carracci Academy.
Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 407. 86. For images from one such modeling session in Rembrandts studio, see
61. Ibid., 403. Erik Hinterding, Ger Luijten, and Martin Royalton-Kisch, eds., Rem-
brandt: The Printmaker (Zwolle: Waanders, 2000), 21317.
62. Christopher S. Wood, Indoor-Outdoor: The Studio around 1500, in
Inventions of the Studio: Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Mary Pardo and 87. Norgate, Miniatura, 108.
Michael Cole (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 88. On the drawing and its afterlife in Rubenss art and that of his fol-
3672. lowers, see A. W. F. M. Meij, Rubens, Jordaens, Van Dyck, and Their
63. Ibid., 56, 58. Circle: Flemish Master Drawings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beunin-
gen (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2001), 8691,
64. Gail Feigenbaum, Practice in the Carracci Academy, in The Artist s
cat. no. 11.
Workshop, ed. Peter M. Lukehart, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 38
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1993), 68. 89. On the drawings, see Hans Vlieghe, Rubens beginnende invloed: Ar-
nout Vinckenborch en het probleem van Jordaens vroegste
65. Jeanne Foster, quoted in Cecily Langdale and David F. Jenkins, Gwen tekeningen, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 38 (1987): 38396; and
John (18761939): An Interior Life (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 41. Nico Van Hout, Jordaens/Not Jordaens: On the Use of Model Studies
66. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 61, cat. no. I.44; the resemblance was first noted in the 17th Century, in Jordaens and the Antique, ed. Joost Vander
by Gl
uck, Van Dycks Anfange, 280. Auwera and Irene Schaudies (Brussels: Royal Museum of Fine Art of Bel-
67. Gustav Gl
uck, for example, declared the resemblance nicht gium, 2012), 5559. I am grateful to Prof. Vlieghe and Dr. Van Hout for
berzeugend (not convincing); Gl
u uck, Van Dyck: Des Meisters Gem
a lde, discussing these drawings with me.
2nd ed. (New York: F. Kleinberger, 1931), 534. 90. A drawing sold at Christies, New York (Old Master & 19th Century Paint-
68. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 38, cat. no. I.159. ings, Drawings & Watercolors, Part II, January 26, 2011, lot 282), and
attributed by Hans Vlieghe to Jordaens appears to depict the same
69. Frank Z
ollner, Ogni Pittore Dipinge Se, in Der K ber sich in sei-
u nstler u model as in the D usseldorf drawing, who is perhaps also identical with
nem Werk, ed. Matthias Winner (Weinheim: VCH, 1992), 13760. the model from Van Dycks Rotterdam drawing. It is thus possible to
70. Marianne Koos, Das Martyrium der Liebe: Ambiguitat in Dosso Dossis conceive of a session, held sometime about 1618, in which Van Dyck,
Heiligem Sebastian, Marburger Jahrbuch f
u r Kunstwissenschaft 38 (2011): Vinckenborch, and Jordaens all worked from the same model. I am
4374. grateful to Stijn Alsteens for bringing this drawing to my attention and
71. On Van Dycks relationship to Venetian tradition, see Jeffrey M. Muller, proposing this interpretation to me.
The Quality of Grace in the Art of Anthony van Dyck, in Anthony Van 91. On this drawing, see Meij, Rubens, Jordaens, Van Dyck, 20912, cat. no. 56.
Dyck, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. et al. (Washington, D.C.: National Gal- 92. The kneeling tormentor in the final painting combines elements of
lery of Art, 1990), 2736. both Van Dycks and Rubenss studies; Lammertse and Vergara, The
72. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 9293, cat. no I.99. Young Van Dyck, 218.
73. For Van Dycks drawing after the Raphael portrait, see Anton van Dyck: 93. One notable example is Van Dycks drawing of a horse, now in the Galle-
Italienisches Skizzenbuch, ed. Gert Adriani (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1940), ria degli Uffizi, Florence, which Rubens incorporated into his entirely
fol. 109v. For Van Dycks self-portrait, see Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 169 autograph Prodigal Son of about 1618 (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone
71, cat. no. II.26. Bellori, The Lives, 216, provides an extensive descrip- Kunsten, Antwerp); Lammertse and Vergara, The Young Van Dyck,
tion of Van Dycks appearance and sumptuous clothing while in Rome. 25455.
74. Bellori, The Lives, 217. The significance of this disguised portrait is dis- 94. On the Cantoor, see Jan Garff and Eva de la Fuente Pedersen, Rubens
cussed in Sarah Joan Moran, A cui ne fece dono: Art, Exchange, and Cantoor: The Drawings of Willem Panneels; A Critical Catalogue (Copenha-
Sensory Engagement in Anthony van Dycks Lamentation for the Ant- gen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 1988); Iris Kockelbergh and Paul Hu-
werp Beguines, in Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, ed. venne, eds., Rubens Cantoor: Een verzameling tekeningen ontstaan in Rubens
Wietse de Boer and Christine G ottler (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 21956. atelier (Antwerp: Rubenshuis, 1993); and Jesper Svenningsen, The Clas-
sification of Drawings in the So-Called Rubens Cantoor, Master Draw-
75. For the Scaglia Virgin and Child, see Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 258, cat.
ings 51, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 34959. In his review of Garff and de la
III.17.
Fuente Pedersens catalog, Julius Held first identified Van Dycks Dublin
76. For the paintings provenances, see ibid., 61, cat. no. I.44, 63, cat. no. youth as the source for the Copenhagen drawing (Master Drawings 29,
I.47, 65, cat. no. I.48, 163, cat. no. II.17, and 163, cat. no. II.18. no. 4 [Winter 1991]: 41630).
77. Erik Duverger, Antwerpse Kunstinventarissen uit de Zeventiende Eeuw (Brus- 95. Francesco Vercellini, quoted in Mary Hervey, The Life, Correspondence
sels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone & Collections of Thomas Horward, Earl of Arundel (Cambridge: Cam-
Kunsten van Belgie, 1992), vol. 6, 46, no. 61: Eenen grooten Sint-Sebas- bridge University Press, 1921), 176 n. 2 (translation slightly modi-
tiaen van A. van Dyck. fied). The letter is unsigned, but Vercellinis authorship has been
78. Ibid., 47, nos. 74, 84: Een fraey Apostelstrogne van A. van Dyck; Het generally accepted.
Contrefeytsel van Ruebens in syn jonckheyt van hem selven gedaen. 96. Wood, Indoor-Outdoor, 38.
VAN DYCK BETWEEN MASTER AND MODEL 191

97. For Rubenss refusal of one particular portrait commission, see Max to dismiss her as no more than a figment would be to risk consign-
Rooses and Charles Ruelens, eds., Correspondance de Rubens et docu- ing her to the abyss of the past. Gaskell, Vermeer s Wager: Specula-
ments e pistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres (Antwerp: Veuve de tions on Art History, Theory, and Art Museums (London: Reaktion
Backer, 1887), vol. 1, 22526; English translation in Magurn, The Let- Books, 2000), 23132.
ters, 3738. On Rubenss self-portraits, see Michael Jaff e, Rubens to 114. For one exception within the literature on Dutch art, see Alison M. Ket-
Himself: The Portraits Sent to Charles I and to N-C. Fabri de tering, Rembrandt and the Male Nude, in Aemulatio: Imitation, Emula-
Peiresc, in Rubens e Firenze, ed. Mina Gregori (Florence: La Nuova tion, and Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500 to 1800; Essays in Honor of
Italia Editrice, 1983), 1932. Eric Jan Sluijter, ed. Anton W. A. Boschloo et al. (Zwolle: Waanders,
98. According to Malvasia (Enggass and Enggass, Malvasia: The Life of Guido 2011), 24862. A recent exhibition has provided a wealth of information
Reni, 11314), when summoned to France to paint the portrait of that about the lives and careers of the models at the Paris academy, in addi-
king with the offer of a thousand doubloons and another thousand for tion to identifying the specific models for a number of surviving draw-
provisions for the journey, [Guido Reni] replied that he was not a ings; Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Georges Brunel, and Camille Debrabant,
painter of portraits. For Poussin, see Elizabeth Cropper, Painting and The Male Nude: Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Paris Academy (Lon-
Possession: Poussins Portrait for Chantelou and the Essais of Mon- don: Wallace Collection, 2013).
taigne, in Winner, Der K ber sich in seinem Werk, 485509.
u nstler u 115. See, for a recent example with references to earlier literature, Erna Kok,
99. Joanna Woodall, Anthonis Mor: Art and Authority (Zwolle: Waanders, The Female Nude from Life: On Studio Practice and Beholder
2007), 38. Fantasy, in The Nude and the Norm in the Early Modern Low Countries, ed.
Karolien De Clippel, Katharina Van Cauteren, and Katlijne Van der
100. Bellori, The Lives, 216.
Stighelen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 3550.
101. Manuscript letter of William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, to Anthony
116. See, for example, Albert Schug, Helenen in jedem Weibe: Helene
Van Dyck, quoted in Richard W. Goulding, Catalogue of the Pictures
Fourment und ein besonderer Portrattypus im Spatwerk von Peter Paul
Belonging to His Grace the Duke of Portland, K.G. (Cambridge: Cambridge
Rubens, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 46 (1985): 11964; Margit Thfner,
University Press, 1936), 485.
Helena Fourments Het Pelsken, Art History 27, no. 1 (February 2004):
102. Bellori, quoted in Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 427 n. 12. 133; and Kristin Lohse Belkin, La belle Hel
ene and Her Beauty Aids:
103. Roger de Piles, quoted in ibid., 427 n. 10. A New Look at Het Pelsken, in Munuscula Amicorum: Contributions on
Rubens and His Colleagues in Honour of Hans Vlieghe, ed. Katlijne Van der
104. Ibid. Stighelen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 299310.
105. Bellori, The Lives, 218. 117. Susan E. James, The Model as Catalyst: Nicolas Lanier and Margaret
106. For an introduction to the legacy of Van Dycks portraits, see Karen Lemon, Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen, 1999:
Hearn, ed., Van Dyck & Britain (London: Tate Publishing, 2009), 7190.
20435. 118. For visual representations of this anecdote, see Georg-W. K oltzsch, Der
107. My thinking about Van Dycks studio is indebted to Svetlana Alperss Maler und sein Modell: Geschichte und Deutung eines Bildthemas (Cologne:
description of Rembrandts practice in Rembrandt s Enterprise, 8487. Dumont, 2000), 8795.
However, I depart from her account in that I regard Rembrandts 119. On Duquesnoy, see Katlijne Van der Stighelen and Jonas Roelens,
approach to the sitting as part of the larger emulation of Van Dyck in Made in Heaven, Burned in Hell: The Trial of the Sculptor-Sodomite
the second half of the seventeenth century. Hieronymus Duquesnoy (16021654) (forthcoming). I am grateful to
108. Bellori, The Lives, 220. Prof. Van der Stighelen for sharing this article with me in advance of its
109. Barnes et al., Van Dyck, 18. publication.
110. Van Dyck, quoted in Giovanni Mendola, Van Dyck in Sicily, in Van 120. For overviews of Van Dycks historiography in this regard, see Held,
Dyck: 15991641, ed. Christopher Brown and Hans Vlieghe (London: Van Dycks Relationship to Rubens; Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Van
Royal Academy of Arts, 1999), 61. Dycks Character Revisited: Valentiner versus de zeventiende-eeuwse his-
toriografische traditie, in Van Dyck 15991999: Conjectures and Refuta-
111. Julius S. Held, The Four Heads of a Negro in Brussels and Malibu, in tions, ed. Hans Vlieghe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 22952; and Jeffrey
Rubens and His Circle: Studies by Julius S. Held, ed. Anne W. Lowenthal, Muller, Anthony van Dyck and Flemish National Identity: A Clash of
David Rosand, and John Walsh Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Images between the Two World Wars, in ibid., 30512.
Press, 1982), 149.
121. Mari
et Westermann, After Iconography and Iconoclasm: Current
112. See, among others, April Masten, Model into Artist: The Changing Face Research in Netherlandish Art, 15661700, Art Bulletin 84, no. 2 (June
of Art Historical Biography, Women s Studies 21, no. 1 (1992): 1741; 2002): 35455.
Marie Lathers, Bodies of Art: French Literary Realism and the Artist s Model
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); and Susan J. Waller, The 122. For a cautionary example of such a retrospective reading of early mod-
Invention of the Model: Artists and Models in Paris, 18301870 (Aldershot, ern images of Saint Sebastian, see Richard E. Spear, The Divine Guido:
U.K.: Ashgate, 2006). See also the useful overview of British material in Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni (New Haven: Yale
Martin Postle and William Vaughan, The Artist s Model from Etty to Spenser University Press, 1997), 6776.
(London: Merrell Holberton, 1999). 123. For Vorsterman, see Rubens and Vorsterman, in Lowenthal et al.,
113. Two exemplary studies are Nancy J. Vickers, The Mistress in the Rubens and His Circle: Studies by Julius S. Held, 11426.
Masterpiece, in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York: 124. Rooses and Ruelens, Correspondance de Rubens, vol. 2, 13537; English
Columbia University Press, 1986), 1941; and Sarah McPhee, translation in Magurn, The Letters, 5961.
Bernini s Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini (New Haven: Yale 125. Rooses and Ruelens, Correspondance de Rubens, vol. 2, 137: Un S. Sebas-
University Press, 2012). Ivan Gaskell has also made a stirring argu- tiano ignudo da mia mano. . . .
ment, in the context of Vermeer studies, that to neglect the model
and to assume through lack of evidence that she had no counter- 126. Hans Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard: Part VIII; Saints
part in actuality, would be to risk acquiescing in the annihilation of (London: Phaidon, 1973), vol. 2, 14850, cat. no. 145.
a person. . . . Her relationship to reality is impossible to gauge, yet 127. Ibid., 149.
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