Here, on the side of the canvas, the chitarrone, without being totally depicted (in contrast to an allegory of music by the Frenchman, Laurent de la Hyre, a contemporary of Van Dyck: see Goldberg 4, p. 4) defines the musical identity and function of the subject. Tool of the mastery of the player, the instrument introduces an effect which determines the perception of the composition. Its oblique angle indicates the action and activity of musical performance within an austere portrait, creating implicit tensions. The spectacular length of the chitarrone (which in surviving specimens can reach two meters) underlines through its erect body, in the suggested tautness of its fine web of the double strung courses, the virile energy of the model.

The instrument’s popularity dates from the end of the sixteenth century, a time when solo singing was becoming increasingly expressive and tailored to the dramatic articulation of the text. Such demands for textural clarity called for instruments capable of supporting the voice without covering its projection or its eloquence. Rich in simple harmonies, particularly deep in the bass range, the theorbo or chitarrone thus took the stage. Its physical presence alone commands attention from the start as the ideal support for the voice, and as a solo instrument. Its uses evolved. During the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, it became the normal foundation of the baroque continuo.

Van Dyck has grasped the essence of the instrument. Its representation does not function as a description but as evocative suggestion (peg-box, body and sound-board remain invisible). The spectacular span, underlined by the mesh of parallel strings which rise up out of obscurity, sings of the authority of the musician, his solo art. Even if one knows nothing of Gaultier at the English court in the epoch of Van Dyck, the portrait creates a gripping and familiar image, powerful by reason of the presence of the model captured live.

Gaultier’s vitality, made up of a mixture of arrogance, edginess and detachment, is concentrated in the expression of the face. The eyes hold us and ask us to witness his character. Doesn’t Gaultier want to tell us of his pride, his haughtiness, his awareness of his talent? Doesn’t he speak of his legitimate expectations as musician of the King? Inasmuch as Van Dyck’s profession was surprisingly but appropriately discreet. The painter offers his model a sublimated image, well-suited to satisfy his aspirations while matching the human truth of his appearance: a warm and glorious portrait, familiar and heroic, intimate and monumental. The figure is painted from a low perspective, elevating the man’s stature, and conferring a silent magnificence upon him. The painter’s style is reserved, “elitist”—after all is he not the painter of the king as well as of Gaultier? The brush underlines the experience of the portraitist, whose genius pays homage to Titian, painter of the Gloved Man (Paris, Louvre): a similar dense and allusive refinement, the same sober elegance, the same attenuated precision of treatment, the same restricted palette of colors, almost monochrome, whose sublime texture is shaped by the sweetness of the relief, the intelligence of the nuances and nebulous tonalities. The fabric of the costume melts into shadow. Van Dyck excels in restoring to the rich and light paste (that beautiful Flemish métier, opulent and unctuous) the abundant plasticity of the materials: the palpitating flesh of the hands and face, the grain and brilliance of the woven fabrics, the wrists and neck of the shirt, the black mass of the costume.

Van Dyck’s analytical acuity leaves nothing to chance. The direction of the left arm corresponds to the oblique vector of the chitarrone in the opposite direction. The energy of the portrait radiates outward from its source: the face. The warm and luminous texture speaks of the fire of the music, a curious, sanguine, nervous hypersensibility. The fixed stare of the focused pupils, the sketched arabesque of the eyebrows, the spontaneous accent of the mustache all contribute to Gaultier’s biting expressiveness, whose ambition as a musician and intelligence the painter has captured. Is it not by means of these subtle indications—the vivacity, but not exuberance of the subject, the expert elegance of the painter, that the ennobling of the model is profiled? The ardor of the model, the exceptional reserve of the brush, work toward a shared ambition—the status of the artist who is concerned with titles, dignity and prerogatives. Musician and painter affirm their sensibility. The intention of art is to move in order to convince; to seduce the commissioner, to please the amateur, to call forth commissions, recognition and glory.

Alas, there is as yet no recording of Gaultier. But to compensate for this frustration, do hear the music of the greatest French theorbist (although he was born after the death of Van Dyck), Robert de Visée, by Hopkinson Smith (theorbo), Astrée E 7773.