Arts, Letters, and Power: Anthony Van Dyck and the Portrait Print, The Crocker Art Museum
By Alexandra Ellison
Is there anything more familiar than a face? Recognition as well as personal connection rests, to a certain extent, upon our ability to remember or recall details, visual aspects, and particularities often expressed most uniquely by the human countenance. In this digital age, telecommunication is embedded in our daily lives, we are accustomed to “seeing” people through space and time and processing vast amounts of, especially visual, information instantaneously. In the 17th century, the emergence of printing technology made it possible to bring art to the masses. In many respects, print was the closest approximation to the internet. As textual literacy rose across Europe, so too did visual literacy. In fact, most people learned to “read” images first – perceiving meaning across the frescoed walls of churches, in the polychrome panes of stained-glass windows, and later, on the lined surface of printed pages. This evolution highlighted an emerging truth; what is knowledge if not recognition?
At least two fascinating stories, complex in scope and suggestion, are presented in Arts, Letters, and Power: Van Dyck and the Portrait Print, a small exhibition that packs a strong art-historical punch at Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum (until October 12). Across two intimate galleries, some sixty faces from four hundred years ago – veritable icons of the 17th century – stare back at a curious contemporary audience. Begun in the 1630s, a series of prints known as the Iconographie (Iconography) was the endeavour of Europe’s preeminent court painter, Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1441), to produce a series of printed portraits representing his prominent contemporaries and recent historical figures. The exhibit underscores the significance of individual identity and social networks as well as the flourishing print industry that developed during this early modern period. With so many illustrious names, compelling depictions, and different artistic approaches to consider, it is a testament to the strength of the curatorial scheme and copywriting that the intricate ideas explored in this exhibition come across so clearly.
Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active 17th century), Pieter Brueghel the Younger, circa 1645. Etching on paper, 8 3/16 x 5 3/4 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Margaret and Timothy Brown, 2021.115.117
The portraits displayed are predominantly engravings along with a some notable examples of etching (there is a difference). However, what is of primary significance is that these pictures were created using reproductive mediums and are therefore repeatable images in the main; the distinctive and defining feature of a print is that it can be replicated. In rare instances, singular works like drawings and references to paintings are deployed strategically to elucidate the artist’s renderings by means of context and comparison. While Van Dyck is the initiating genius behind nearly every image in this exhibition, the vivid portraits and personalities observed in the present prints (as well as in each iteration of the so- called Iconography) were achieved only through the collaboration and aid of other artists.
Engravings and etchings are formed when a flat surface, or plate, is incised with lines. Once the lines have been filled with pigment, the plate has been inked, and the pressure of the press machinery transfers pigment to paper – the resulting image is literally and technically an impression. The impact of this emerging technology is at the heart of Arts, Letters, and Power, as the equipment for and expertise in engraving (a relatively new method for the mass production of media) advanced in the West on the heels of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century. By the 1600s, the proliferation of textual and visual literacy that resulted from these new technologies engendered a changing social, economic, and cultural atmosphere that ultimately gave rise to religious and political revolutions across Europe. Through the Iconography, we are able to encounter leading lights of this radical era, including Inigo Jones, Erasmus, Maria de Medici, as well as the heroes and villains of the Thirty Years’ War between Protestants and Catholics that gripped nearly the whole Europe.
(L) Lucas Vorsterman the Elder (Flemish, 1595–1675), published by Martin van den Enden (Flemish, 1605– 1673), Ambrogio Spinola, n.d. Engraving on paper, 9 3/16 x 6 3/4 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Margaret and Timothy Brown, 2021.115.132
(R) Charles Christian Nahl (American, born Germany, 1818–1878), Study after Anthony Van Dyck: Ambrogio Spinola in Armor, n.d. Ink and watercolor on beige paper, 3 7/8 in. x 3 1/4 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Beverly and Stuart Denenberg, in honor of Anne and Malcolm McHenry, 2005.74.8.2
First published in 1632 and followed by several revised editions, Van Dyck’s Iconography endeavoured to illustrate the artist’s dramatic portrayals of artists, luminaries, and leaders for an unprecedentedly broad audience. The project’s first edition was printed by Maarten van den Enden, a prominent Antwerp publisher, in close collaboration with Van Dyck, and included eighty portraits (twenty-eight leaders and intellectuals and fifty-two artists). It’s likely these prints were produced as single leaves sold in sets (no bound version or evidence of a common frontispiece survives). In 1644, three years after Van Dyck’s death, the copper plates were purchased by Gillis Hendricx, who printed a second, expanded edition of the portrait series. Many of the prints displayed at the Crocker are from these first two printings.
(L) Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641) and unknown engraver, published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active 17th century), Lucas Vorsterman, n.d. Etching and engraving on paper, 8 3/4 x 6 1/8 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Margaret and Timothy Brown, 2021.115.20
(R)Paulus Pontius (Flemish, 1603–1658), published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active 17th century), Peter Paul Rubens, n.d. Engraving on paper, 8 1/4 x 6 1/8 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Margaret and Timothy Brown, 2021.115.100
To actualize his creative vision, Van Dyck relied on the assistance of other talented draughtsmen and craftsmen, expert engravers, who depended, to varying degrees, on the artist’s etched, drawn, or painted compositions. Van Dyck was renowned for his ability to executive a distinctive likeness (or what may more precisely be described as liveliness) and capture subtleties of expression with remarkable skill; he is undoubtedly a master of presentation and proportion. The actual creation, pulling or pressing of the plates, of the images occurred under the auspices of a publisher capable of executing a significant quantity of high-quality prints. In the present exhibition, one counts at least nine different artists who contributed their engravings to the Iconography. The artworks on display at the Crocker evidence a vast and intricate enterprise; the complexity of their production as well as their original reception and subsequent collection is what, considered together, constitute the elaborate underpinning of an absorbing show.
The exhibition is curated thematically, with artworks arranged according to the social and cultural networks of their sitters: Artists occupy the first room and, positioned centrally, one spies an engraving of Van Dyck’s confident self-portrait beneath that of his former artistic mentor, Peter Paul Rubens, arguably the most influential artist of the Baroque period. One also encounters the nervous-looking Lucas Vorsterman, accomplished engraver and assistant (copyist) to Rubens, who worked closely with both of the aforementioned artists and produced several plates for the Iconography. Nearby, Van Dyck’s partial, yet evocative etchings of Pieter and Jan Brueghel bring viewers face-to-face with two sons of the famous Flemish painting dynasty.
Lucas Vorsterman the Elder (Flemish, 1595–1675) published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active 17th century), Anthony van Dyck, n.d. Engraving on paper, 8 7/8 x 6 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Margaret and Timothy Brown, 2021.115.2
Following are the Men of Letters (philosophers and public intellectuals) and Powerful People (aristocrats, politicians, and military figures). Succinct wall text, along with more suitably specific smaller panels throughout elucidate the identity of every sitter and, thus, the historical interest and investment in their representation as well as the materials and processes involved in the image’s production. It is worth noting that with the exception of a few striking etchings and preparatory drawings, the engraved portraits on view were actually made by artists other than Van Dyck. It is a group show, with each attribution, however, haunted by an acknowledgement (after Anthony Van Dyck) and each image by an inscription (Ant.van Dyck pinxit or Anthony Van Dyck painted).
For individuals around whom a story coalesces, the artist’s power rests in the creation of an image to bear witness, to literally re-present. No doubt, Van Dyck was aware the Iconography would increase his own celebrity. While the term celebrity may seem anachronistic, it is during the 17th century that the word begins to embody its contemporary connotations. In his seminal study Renaissance Self- Fashioning (1980), Stephen Greenblatt considers the transition from medieval to modern and locates in this period an increased interest in constructing one’s identity and presenting a public persona – ideas epitomized in portraiture. It is perhaps no coincidence that artists comprised more than three-quarters of the portraits printed in the first edition of the Iconography. There are obvious parallels within our present culture’s experience of transformative technology and this new world of social networks, digital personas, and parasocial behaviour.
Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641) and unknown engraver, published by Gillis Hendricx (Flemish, active 17th century), Jan Brueghel the Elder, circa 1645. Etching and engraving on paper, 8 x 6 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Margaret and Timothy Brown, 2021.115.9
On the one hand, this is a show about identity, that of the sitters and, more subtly, the various artists, engravers, and publishers who made this expansive printing project possible. It’s about fame and reputation as much as it is also about technology and networks – the social lives of those portrayed and, more covertly, of the collectors and connoisseurs who have owned and admired these portraits. Notably, nearly all the prints exhibited at the Crocker are from the collection of Margaret and Timothy Brown, who have generously gifted 160 works related to Van Dyck’s Iconography to the museum’s collection. Personal inscriptions, amateur copies, and even the simple existence of these delicate prints attest to centuries of thoughtful and exercised interest in these images.
From their very inception these portraits were meant to be acquired, arranged, displayed, and discussed. What is so invigorating about the current show at the Crocker is the way in which through preservation, presentation, and ultimately the authority of the print (meaning the facility of the medium to capture, convey, and circulate knowledge), a 21st-century audience finds itself repeating an experience. When we look and learn, converse and speculate, we are echoing that initial dynamic engagement and sharing in the same experience as each audience over the last four hundred years. What is knowledge if not recognition?
