Attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck

Prosper Henry Lankrink (L.2090)

Frankfurt-am-Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Handzeichnungen alter Meister aus deutschem Privatbesitz, 1924, cat. no. 35, reproduced (as Van Dyck)

Some losses and thin areas at edges, especially left and top. Remains of old adhesive along top edge, verso. Ink has eaten into paper in some places, resulting in small hole, lower right. Paper lightly foxed and somewhat dirty throughout. Otherwise reasonably good condition.
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This intriguing, double-sided sheet, is remarkable for the way in which the artist has drawn very similar compositional studies on each side, but in strikingly different combinations of media.  They must be studies for the top part of the same altarpiece, but no corresponding painting has yet been identified.  As a compositional type, this scene would seem to have more in common with the paintings of Rubens than with those of Van Dyck.  The only remotely similar surviving composition by the latter is the Ecstasy of St. Augustine, in the Augustijnenkerk, Antwerp, for which this cannot be considered a preparatory study, as a key element in the iconography of that subject is that the swarming putti bear a great variety of attributes.

The technique is, however, very Van Dyckian: the angular penwork in the central figure, the much broader handling in the putti, which are entirely drawn with the brush, and the complementary and imaginative use of pen, wash and black chalk within the same composition, can all be found in various drawings by Van Dyck.¹ The drawing cannot be convincingly linked with any other artist in the Rubens circle, and is certainly of high enough quality to justify the attribution to Van Dyck, so although the sheet is unquestionably rather unusual within his work, it would seem reasonable to retain this traditional attribution.

1. See, for example, the drawings in Rotterdam, New York, Berlin and Hamburg: reproduced Van Dyck Drawings, exhib. cat., New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, and Fort Worth, Kimbell Museum of Art, 1991, cat. nos. 13, 18, 31 and 34