painting
Head Study
Anthony van Dyck
About this work
Object details
- TitleHead Study
- Datec. 1618-1620
- Mediumoil on panel
- Measurements37 × 30 cm
- Inventory number5168
More about this work
On the central triangular core piece of this panel Van Dyck painted the head of a thin old man in lost profile, viewed halfway from behind in other words. This may be a fragment of a panel that originally had several heads. A later artist turned its irregular shape into a vertical rectangle and added clothing and a dark background. The model’s identity was of no interest to Van Dyck, but the pose and the action of light on his face and neck muscles were. The brushwork is efficient and displays a keen power of observation. Transparent paint layers alternate with opaque passages and with accents that reflect the light. A rumpled white collar provides the closing chord to this sonata in greys, ochres and browns.
Van Dyck made the study around 1618-1620 in preparation for a painting. He was working at the time as a young artist in the studio of Peter Paul Rubens. This study head was the point of departure for the kneeling figure offering Christ a reed as a staff at bottom right of the Crowning of Thorns (Madrid, Museo del Prado, inv. no. P001474) and in a second painting of the same subject (formerly Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, inv. no. 770, destroyed in the Second World War). The scaled-up figure is half naked and is wearing a headband. There is an anatomical chalk study of the figure in Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. no. MB 341 (PK)). A few other heads doing the rounds on the art market are exercises by Van Dyck for the heads of other figures in those two pictures.
References
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