This arresting figure study of an elderly man represents a major discovery from the early period of Sir Anthony van Dyck, an artist second only to Sir Peter Paul Rubens in the hierarchy of Flemish seventeenth-century masters.  It is one of only two large studies after live models in Van Dyck’s oeuvre¹ and was executed while the young artist was working closely with Rubens in Antwerp.  The work served as a study for Van Dyck’s painting of Saint Jerome at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam (fig. 1), which has been dated by scholars to circa 1618-1620.²  The connection between the two is unmistakable; much of the musculature is uniformly rendered, and the man’s proper right arm is positioned nearly identically.  That the man in the present example faces slightly more to the left, however, makes it clear that Van Dyck executed this work not as a template for a painting, but rather to understand human anatomy and convincingly render it in space.

This large and imposing sketch was painted on a bolt of canvas that was subsequently laid down on panel. The original canvas extends vertically on the left side only just beyond the man’s knees, and the lower right corner has been cut away. Nevertheless, the most important aspect of the work, the study of the man itself, is unscathed. As Susan Barnes, who first recognized this lot as by Van Dyck, wrote, “… the painting is surprisingly well preserved and the delicate half-tones in the arms and legs are intact.”³

Van Dyck employed this male model on more than one occasion; he also rendered a double study of this figure's head (fig. 2), which served as the basis for several details in other history paintings,⁴ among them the remarkable Crucifixion of Saint Peter in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels (fig. 3), where he is seen upside down.⁵

Although the lean musculature of the man depicted in this work is based on a live model, the body type has its roots in both antiquity and in the work of Rubens, with whom the young Van Dyck worked so closely in these years. The pose stems from the so-called Borghese Fisherman, an antique black marble now in the Musée du Louvre (fig. 4), which owes its title to its previous ownership by Cardinal Scipione Borghese (though when Rubens visited Rome it was in the collection of Duke Giovanni Angel Altemps). In the time of Rubens and Van Dyck, the statue was thought to represent the ancient philosopher Seneca, shown dying from self-inflicted stab wounds and standing in a basin of his own blood. In actuality, the statue is a Roman copy after a Hellenistic original, which had no legs beneath mid-calf when it was discovered in the sixteenth century and likely represents a fisherman standing on a beach At any rate, the marble fascinated Rubens: he made several drawings after it (fig. 5)⁶ and his arresting Death of Seneca (fig. 6)⁷ was largely based on his studies after this antique figure. While the present study clearly has a place in a long development from antiquity to Rubens,⁸ at the same time, it is an accurate representation of a sinewy old man.

In its more frontal arrangement, Van Dyck’s Saint Jerome in Rotterdam (fig. 1) is somewhat dependent on Rubens’ Saint Jerome in Potsdam (fig. 7),⁹ which was painted by the master shortly after returning from Italy to Antwerp in circa 1610. It is likely that Van Dyck knew that painting, but Rubens’ conception of the saint in Potsdam is more muscular and Michelangelesque than Van Dyck’s emaciated yet virile corpus in the Rotterdam painting. Rubens’ slightly later Saint Jerome of about 1612 in Dresden (fig. 8)¹⁰ exerted a greater impact on the young Van Dyck, as we can see by comparing the latter’s Saint Jerome of circa 1615-1616 in the Liechtenstein Collection in Vienna (fig. 9).¹¹ In the painting by Rubens, the body of the saint is still muscular, although the wilderness has begun to take its toll. In Van Dyck’s version, the saint’s skin is sagging over emaciated muscles that have atrophied. The Rubens example is directly derived from one of the artist’s drawings after the Borghese Fisherman,¹² while the Van Dyck example is the natural evolution of his studies of the live model.

This leads to a question of dating the newly discovered sketch. Susan Barnes suggests a date of execution around 1618.¹³ If Van Dyck’s Saint Jerome in Vienna (fig. 9) is as early as 1612, one would be prompted to date the study in question earlier, or assume that Van Dyck was already conversant with this body type before making his sketch from life. The latest literature pushes the dating of the Vienna picture to circa 1615-1617,¹⁴ which would render moot the issue of dating the present work, because it could well date from circa 1615-1617.

As highlighted by Susan Barnes in her recent article, two obscure details in this painting are worthy of note. One is the ghostly appearance in the upper left of a face, which corresponds with the position of the angel in the Rotterdam Saint Jerome (fig. 1). If intentional, Van Dyck’s rendering is now worn and nearly impossible to make out; if a coincidence, then the spectral image is simply being “read into” in the scumbled area. The other detail is the equally mysterious appearance of an infant’s hand on the calf of the naked man. Barnes termed this “a pentimento by another artist,” but it may have also been an original pentimento overpainted by Van Dyck himself, or an element of a totally different composition that was painted over.

Saint Jerome is often painted outdoors due to his hagiographic account in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, according to which, he spent five years in the Syrian desert, where he led a life of meditation and penance and befriended a lion.¹⁵ Jerome is identifiable by his attributes of cardinals’ robes or a lion. While neither this costume nor animal appears in the present sketch, Van Dyck very well may have seen this naked yet dignified man as an apt model for later depictions of Saint Jerome.

The raw appeal of the subject of this remarkable nude study by Van Dyck, along with the delightful freedom of brushwork, anticipate the powerful paintings of Lucian Freud (fig. 10).

1. The other large study of a nude after life is the Study for a Saint Sebastian in Dublin; see S. Barnes, N. De Poorter, O. Millar, and H. Vey, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, cat. no. I.46. Rubens owned both that large study and Van Dyck’s Saint Jerome now in Rotterdam (see following note).

2. Inv. no. VdV 22, oil on canvas, 165 by 130 cm. When Rubens died, Van Dyck’s Saint Jerome in Rotterdam remained among his possessions; see also De Poorter, in Barnes 2004, cat. no. I.33.

3. Barnes 2021, p. 254.

4. Antwerp, Rockox House, inv. no. 77.111, oil on canvas, marouflaged on panel, see De Poorter, in Barnes et al. 2004, cat. no. I.92. See also F. Lammertse, in The Young Van Dyck, exhibition catalogue, A. Vergara and F. Lammertse (eds.), Madrid 2012-2013, pp. 102-104, cat. no. 4 (noting that Jordaens seems to have used Van Dyck’s study on the right side of his sketch in the Rockox House for his Satyr and the Farmer’s Family in Kassel).

5. Inv. no. 215, oil on canvas, 204 by 117 cm. See J.J.P. Preciado, in The Young Van Dyck, exhibition catalogue, A. Vergara and F. Lammertse (eds.), Madrid 2012-2013, pp. 126-128, cat. no. 11.

6. M. van der Meulen, Rubens Copies after the Antique, Part I, in Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, no. XXIII, London 1994, II, pp. 34-40, cat. nos. 7-13; and K. Jonckheere, Rubens. Portraits after Existing Prototypes, in Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, London & Turnhout 2016, pp. 66-67.

7. Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. no. 305, oil on panel, 185 by 154.7 cm.

8. A.M. Logan and K.L. Belkin, The Drawings of Peter Paul Rubens, A Critical Catalogue, Volume One, 1590-1608, Turnhout 2021, pp. 151-156, cat nos. 108-110, and pp. 245-248, cat nos. 191-194.

9. Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci, inv. no. GK 1 7578, oil on panel, 185.5 by 135.5 cm.

10. Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, inv. no. 955, oil on canvas, 236 by 163 cm.

11. Vienna, Liechtenstein Collection, inv. no. GE 56, oil on canvas, 158 by 131 cm.

12. Rubens’ Saint Jerome in Dresden corresponds directly with the artist’s drawing after the Borghese Fisherman in Milan, from the precise position of both arms to the separation of the fingers in the man’s left hand. See H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VIII, Saints, vol. II, London 1973, p. 100, and Van der Meulen 1994, part I, pp. 34-35, cat. no. 7 and part II, fig. 21.

13. Barnes 2021, p. 257, note 6, where she compiles a series of history paintings “from the [same] period,” and these are traditionally dated circa 1618.

14. Preciado 2012-2013, pp. 96-98, cat. no. 2.

15. Vlieghe 1973, cat. no. 7, note 8, and The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, G. Ryand and H. Ripperger (trans.), New York 1969, pp. 587-592.