Precocious genius will never fail to impress. But it is also very hard to relate to. Aged 14, Anthony Van Dyck painted a Portrait of a Seventy-Year-Old man that looked like a portrait by a seventy-year-old man, signed it, and marked it with his age, the idea being that the younger you are, the more impressive you are.
And Van Dyck was impressive. Looking at the work he produced in his teenage years, it’s hard not to think of Julius Caesar, sniveling before a statue of Alexander the Great because he achieved so much, so young. Frankly, I feel like a loser.
Which is why The Young Van Dyck, edited by Alejandro Vergara and Friso Lammertse, is a welcome read. It shows that, far from striding out like a lone pony with a golden nose, Van Dyck was saddled like the rest of us with rules to observe and masters to appease as he discovered his own artistic language.
The son of a silk merchant and a woman of means, Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) trained first in his native Antwerp before leaving for a five-year sojourn in Italy at the age of 22.
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