- 27
Sir Anthony van Dyck Antwerp 1599 - 1641 London
Description
- Anthony van Dyck
- Portrait of Eerryk de Putte (Erycius Puteanus)
- oil on canvas
Provenance
The Princes of Liechtenstein, Vienna and Vaduz, 1780 until about 1950;
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina;
By whom sold, New York, Sotheby's, January 28, 1999, lot 208;
There purchased by the present owner.
Literature
W. von Bode, “Anton van Dyck in der Liechtenstein Galerie”, Die Graphischen Kunst, vol. XII, 1889, p. 49;
L. Cust, Anthony van Dyck: An Historical Study of his Life and Works, London, 1900, p. 234, no. 25, dated erroneously to the First Antwerp period;
E. Schaeffer, Van Dyck: des Meisters Gemalde; Klassiker der Kunst, no. 13, Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1909, p. 246 left;
Catalogue of the Liechtenstein Collection, Vienna, 1925, no. 150;
G. Gluck, Van Dyck: des Meisters Gemalde; Klassiker der Kunst, no. 13, New York,1931, second revised edition, p. 270 left;
M. Mauquoy-Hendrickx, L’Iconographie d’Antoine Van Dyck: Catalogue Raisonné, Brussels, 1956, no. 36;
H. Vey, Die Ziechnungen Anton van Dyck, Brussels, 1962, vol. I, no. 255;
W.R. Valentiner, Catalogue of the Paintings Including Three Sets of Tapestries, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, 1956, no. 114;
E. Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony van Dyck, 1988, volume II, p. 228-9, no. 566, illustrated, (as datable c. 1624-1632, during van Dyck’s second Antwerp period);
C. Brown, The Drawings of Anthony van Dyck, 1991, pp. 198-199, under catalogue no. 56, illustrated fig. 2, as “undoubtedly by Van Dyck”;
H. Vey in, S. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar, H.Vey, Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 344, no. III.120.
Catalogue Note
Eerryk de Putte, the humanist and philologist, was born at Venlo in 1574 and died at Louvain in 1646. He attended lectures on ancient history given by Justus Lipsius, and as a result Latinized his name to Erycius Puteanus. In 1597 he went to Italy and was in contact with the great classical scholars there, especially Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, who secured for him the position of professor of Latin in Milan. Later, he took the chair left vacant by his old master Justus Lipsius in Louvain, where he taught for forty years. He was appointed historiographer to King Philip IV, and Archduke Albert named him his honorary counselor in 1612. His dream was to establish in Flanders a culture based on classical models of eloquence.
In the portrait engraved by Pieter de Jode for Van Dyck’s Iconography, the artist's famed collection of portraits of notable men of the period, Eerryk de Putte is shown half-length, with his right hand turning the pages of a large book. A preliminary drawing for the print by van Dyck, in the British Museum, London, clearly shows the indentations of the engraver’s stylus. In both the drawing and engraving the figure is placed in an elaborate setting, seated at a table in his study in front of shelves filled with books and a curtain billowing behind. Brown dates the drawing to the period between Van Dyck’s return from Italy and his departure in 1635 to England.
Van Dyck’s intentions for the painted portrait of his good friend, De Putte, were quite different, for he has depicted the sitter as an older man and rather more withdrawn than in the drawing. He turns and gazes off to the right, as if to remove himself from the viewer’s presence. Here, the red curtain behind de Putte restricts any view of the bookshelves depicted in the other portraits and serves to focus attention on the sitter himself. In the painting the sitter wears a prominent medallion around his neck, which bears the portrait of Philip IV of Spain. This medal had been presented to de Putti on December 18, 1629 by the Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia and is inscribed: REX PHIL III D G HISP ET INDIAR. This is an important element not found in the drawn or engraved portraits and clearly reveals the importance of his official role as the Royal historiographer to the Spanish court . On stylistic grounds Larson suggested that this portrait dates to circa 1626-1632, but this cannot be correct given it must have been painted sometime after the presentation of the medal in 1629.
Van Dyck reveals in this portrait a wonderful ability to suggest the mood of his sitter through gesture and expression. The de Putte portrayed in the engraving and in the drawing is a public figure, and appears actively engaged in his world of books and study. The present portrait is a more private and haunting depiction, shown without any scholarly attributes and dressed in a garment of the utmost simplicity. All background references are removed and attention focuses on the austere figure. "Puteanus" is presented simply as a man of thought. The dark pyramidal shape of his body rises up and culminates in his face, which is strongly lit from the left. He holds his right hand with palm facing upwards, as if engaged in a rhetorical argument or lecture. Curiously, the beautifully rendered hand in the painted portrait was once painted over, giving the composition an unintended severity and distorted meaning. Since restoration, the painting again attains a balance and proportion characteristic of van Dyck. A copy of this picture, which was in the possession of Thomas Windsor, of Maidenhead, in 1790, and was on the English market in 1994, shows the whole hand, and below it an additional strip of gown. This might suggest that the present picture was very slightly cut at the bottom at an earlier date.
A copy, attributed to Thomas Willeboirts, which shows the figure cut off above the hand and framed closer at both sides, is in the Museum Pantin-Moretus, Antwerp.