The Gallery Collections

The Iconography of Antoine Van Dyck.
Dama di Van Dyck

Iconography generally means the collection of portraits of important people, contemporaries of Van Dyck, created with the technique of engraving by the artist himself or under his direction. The project of this work, probably begun in 1626 just after the artist’s return from Italy, had been realized since the beginning with the cooperation of the printer Martinus Van den Enden from Antwerp, charged with the publication. Proceeding with the work, the artistic level achieved in the etchings is extraordinary, considering that up to that moment no portrait had been made with this technique.
When, in 1632, Van Dyck left the Flanders to join Charles I and become the court painter, many engravings had been realized. In the edition of Gillis Hendrick, 100 works had been created, which then became 124 in the collection of the Verdussen brothers, realized between the end of the XVII and the beginning of the XVIII centuries, and presented now in the gallery in one of its examples.
The collection, one of the first and most important of this genre, is divided into three sections, corresponding to the ranks of the people portrayed: princes (intended as nobles) and generals, State personalities and intellectuals, artists and collectors. On the title page, this is confirmed in the pedestal, whose function is to support the self-portrait of Van Dyck, carrying the inscription: Icones principium virorum doctorum pictorum chalcographorum statuariorum nec non amatorum pictoriae artis numero centum et viginti quator ab Antonio Van Dyck pictore ad vivum expressae eiusque sumptibus aeri incise.
The collection of Verdussen’s engravings has also a French title, which stresses the importance of the portraits and its artist, famous painter and knight of the King – le cabinet des plus beaux portraits (…) faits par le fameux Antoine Van Dyck Chevalier et peintre du Roi –and the artist’s economic participation in the realisation of his work – (…) les quels l’Autheur mesme a faict Graver à ses propres dèpens - .

(from Iconographies of Antoine Van Dyck – Catalogue Raisonné by Marie Mauquoy – Hendrickx)

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Between 1904 and 1905 Picasso dedicated a complete series of etchings to the circus world. The portraits of "The acrobats", realized between the blue and the rose period, and printed by Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1913, put the observer into the parisian universe of the epoch. Picasso represented acrobats, clowns, dancers, figures who both symbolyse the precariourness of life and he feels similar to his condition.