| During the first half of the seventeenth century Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) appeared on the scene like a shooting star, a rare prodigy. At the age of seventeen he opened his own studio in Antwerp; by nineteen although nominally an apprentice to Rubens, he was more a collaborator (and the more talented of the two). His break with his mentor, a pillar of the Flemish school, and consequent development of an individual style came after a period in Italy between 1621 and 1626.
In the portrait of a lutenist, probably Jacques Gaultier (a musician at the English court between 1617 and 1647), the mature Van Dyck celebrates the presence of a Frenchman at an English court that had come to appreciate the art of the French school of lutenists. Within the context of the painter’s career, the work betrays an Italian sensibility; in that of the musician it captures the theorbist at the pinnacle of his fame. Painting and music come together to celebrate two sensibilities. The canvas can be dated to after the painter’s arrival at court in 1632, when Charles I knighted him and made him official painter. |
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