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Portrait of the Artist As a Young Internationalist: Van Dyck’S St Sebastian Bound for Martyrdom in the Context of His Early Career

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Portrait of the Artist As a Young Internationalist: Van Dyck’S St Sebastian Bound for Martyrdom in the Context of His Early Career Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2015 Meet the Masters: Highlights from the Scottish National Gallery Portrait of the Artist as a Young Internationalist: Van Dyck’s St Sebastian Bound for Martyrdom in the context of his early career Dr Christopher R. Marshall, University of Melbourne 22 / 23 April 2015 Lecture summary: Viewing Van Dyck’s early masterpiece, St Sebastian Bound for Martyrdom allows us to consider the role of artistic investigation and international travel in the development of Van Dyck’s career. As is well known, Van Dyck followed his master and mentor Rubens in developing an internationally oriented outlook to his career that was extraordinarily ‘Global’ for its day. This culminated in his extensive work – undertaken during most of the 1630s – painting for the court of King Charles I. The groundwork for this was laid in an extended series of sojourns in various centres in Italy from 1621-1627. During this time Van Dyck was based most extensively in Genoa, where his portraits, in particular, proved exceptionally popular among the new mercantile and aristocratic patrons then setting up extensive palaces and collections throughout the city. He also travelled to Sicily at the invitation of the Viceroy, Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, a sign of his early fame and international recognition of his work. In Palermo, however, he became quarantined as a result of a devastating Plague that swept through the region from May 1624 – June 1626 and that killed many thousands of people – including the Viceroy himself. While there, Van Dyck painted a small group of devotional images of St Rosalie, who had been recently promoted as patron saint of the city and was prayed to for intercession against the Plague. In these works, Van Dyck showed his exceptional abilities in completely transforming the iconography and treatment of images of this saint. His model proved an extraordinary source of inspiration for the local Sicilian painters, most notably Pietro Novelli. During the same period, Van Dyck also painted two works for the rich Flemish collector based in Naples, Gaspard Roomer. These paintings – one an almost identical variant of the Edinburgh St Sebastian - also proved transformative for local traditions of Neapolitan painting. At the end of his extended period in Italy, therefore, Van Dyck had developed from a precociously brilliant young assistant to Rubens, to a highly influential internationally oriented master in his own right. Slide list: Rubens and workshop (Van Dyck?), Lamentation, formerly Antwerp Cathedral, ca. 1617-18 VAN DYCK (etc.), Lamentation, painting, Date c. 1618-1620 Repository Museo del Prado St Sebastian Bound for Martyrdom, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, ca. 1620-21 (see also the second version in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich) Isabella Brant, Date 1621, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.) Self-portrait, possibly 1620-21, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.25) Portraits of the Painters Lucas and Cornelis de Wael, c. 1627, Pinacoteca capitolina (Rome, Italy) Portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, Date 1623-25, Galleria Palatina, Florence Susannah and the Elders, 1621/26, City: Munich, Alte Pinakothek Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo, Date 1624, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, 1871 (71.41) Virgin & Child with Sts. Rosalia, Peter, & Paul, Date 1629, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Comparative works: STRADANUS, Joannes (after) Title: A Dutch Studio in the Sixteenth Century (engraving by Theodore Galle) Work Date: c1550 Rubens, Peter Paul, Sir, 1577-1640, St. Gregory the Great and Other Saints Worshipping the Madonna, 1607-8, Musee de Grenoble Terbrugghen, Hendrik, 1588?-1629, Title Calling of St. Matthew , Date 1621, Centraal Museum (Utrecht, Netherlands) Gerrit van Honthorst, Christ Crowned with Thorns, LA County Museum, ca. 1617 Lodovico Carracci (Italian, 1555 - 1619), Title St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, 1612, The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center FINOGLIA, Paolo, Title: Madonna & Child with Saint Rosalia, City: Museo Diocesano, Conversano,1620s-early 1630s References: BAILEY, 2005 Bailey, Gauvin Alexander: “Anthony Van Dyck, the Cult of Saint Rosalie, and the 1624 Plague in Palermo”, in Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Pamela M. Jones, Franco Mormando and Thomas W. Worcester (eds.): Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 118-36. BARNES, DE POORTER, MILLAR AND VEY, 2004 Barnes, Susan J., Nora De Poorter, Oliver Millar and Horst Vey: Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Yale University Press, 2004. LONDON, 2012 Van Dyck in Sicily 1624-25: Painting and the Plague (exh. cat., Dulwich Picture Gallery, ed. Xavier F. Salomon), Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2012. .
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