Notice de l'oeuvre :
Anthony van Dyck, pupil of Hendrick van Balen, was doubtlessly one of the major exponents of 17th century painting. A prolific and spirited painter, he was highly technically skilled from a very young age. As Alan McNairn stated “very few artists had a similarly successful and fecund adolescence”. Long before his trip to Genoa, which took place towards the end of 1621, Van Dyck had already established a solid reputation for himself and an outstanding notoriety within Antwerp’s most prestigious artistic centres. His promotion to master of the Guild of Saint Luke in February 1618, when he was only eighteen years old, testifies to his prodigious precocity.
During his productive adolescence Anthony van Dyck was particularly praised for his depictions of the apostles. He reproduced multiple versions of paintings displaying these subjects and many of them have been identified and studied in depth. This portrait of Saint Peter belongs to this production and it is either an original copy or a variation on the famous version from the Aschaffenburg series, which is currently in Dresden (ill. 1). Both works have similar dimensions and the differences between the two are almost imperceptible. In the composition dedicated to the first bishop of Rome, Van Dyck depicted the Saint as an emaciated old man who looks downwards with a soft gaze which seems to be fading. This representation crystallises the feeling of regret that gripped the apostle following his denial of Christ. Within the corpus of representations of the apostles conceived by Van Dyck, those of Saint Peter are the ones that vary the most in terms of pose. A version now in the Hermitage (ill. 2) shows the moment in which the apostle receives the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, just as it is narrated in the Gospel of Matthew.
The different painting series of the apostles raise important attribution issues, as well as dating ones. The Aschaffenburg series is generally presented as having been the first ever made. It was also involved in a trial in the 1660s. Nineteen years before the death of the artist the canon François Hillerwerve, who at the time was the owner of this series of paintings, sued the merchant Pierre Meulewels and accused him of having sold him studio copies instead of original works. This diatribe confirms the existence of difficulties associated with Van Dyck’s paintings of apostles, and highlights the longevity of these issues, which first emerged in the 17th century. The trial also crystallises the complexity of the practice of connoisseurship, of the evolution of the notion of authenticity and of the confusion that still exists between authorship and autographie.
Christopher Brown argued that this portrait of Saint Peter was made between 1617 and 1618 due to its palpable stylistic proximity with the Bearing of the Cross, which is now in the Church of Saint-Paul in Antwerp (ill. 3). The expert notably stated that “the warm colours, the fluid technique and the caricatural quality of the representation of the Saint are all elements that are typical of the beginning of the painter’s career”. In this composition the brush of the painter moves with nimbleness on the panel. Only a few spots of light depicted in the area of the Saint’s face indicate a thicker use of paint. Amongst the numerous representations of apostles painted by Van Dyck, Saint Matthew (ill. 4), which belongs to the Böhler series, is characterised by a rendering of the figure’s hair that is similar to that used by the painter for the representation of the hair of Saint Peter in our portrait.
The analysis of the materiality of the painting similarly suggests that it was created between 1617 and 1618. The most convincing piece of evidence for this is undoubtedly the presence of the coat of the arms of the city of Antwerp and the mark of the panel maker (tafereelmaker) Guilliam Aertsen (ill. 5) on the back of the painting. According to the specialists from the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project (JVDPP), these elements only appear in the paintings produced by the artist between 1618 and 1626. These studies, together with the research by Christopher Brown, enable us to confidently place the date of the creation of the painting between the years 1617 and 1618.
The depiction of the apostles belongs to a long tradition which, as Susan Urbach argued in a 1983 article, dates back to at least the time of Roger van der Weyden. Urbach also showed that if it is true that Van Dyck was inspired by Rubens, then it must be similarly true that he was exposed to the work of Raphael and Goltzius. Furthermore, Urbach saw a link between this representation of Saint Peter and that of the Saint displayed in a painting by Frans Floris (ill. 6) due to the similarities in the remarkable physiognomy of the figures in the two works.
This three-quarter view portrait, which displays an effervescent and audacious technique, belongs to the series of paintings by Van Dyck portraying the apostles and Christ. The many studies which Van Dyck dedicated to this subject confirm that the painter was inspired by Rubens’ representations of the apostles, which he produced between 1610 and 1612 (ill. 7). Differently from the famous master from Antwerp, the young artist tightened his composition in order to focus on both the rendering of the face of the ‘sitter’ and on his psychology. Furthermore, he limited the inclusion of attributes associated with the figure displayed and often truncated their depiction within the composition. The gesticulation of his figures is also kept to a minimum. In our portrait of Saint Peter the inclusion of accessories is limited to what is strictly necessary for the identification of the apostle. In our version he only carries two keys, which symbolise the power given to the Church by Christ. The representation of his clothes is simple and it enables the viewer to focus on the apostle’s countenance, which expresses a particularly rare psychological intensity. The connection between Rubens and Van Dyck can be easily explained since, as many archival documents dating back to 1620 suggest, the latter worked as Rubens’ assistant. A genuine epigone and disciple of Rubens, Van Dyck also collaborated, like many others, to the creation of the cartoon tapestries showing the history of Consul Decius Mus in 1618. Despite this evidence, the details of the relationship between Rubens and Van Dyck are difficult to pinpoint. Notwithstanding, they have been the subject of an important corpus of research and of academic debates and controversies. Susan J. Barnes, Justus Müller Hofstete, Alan McNairn and Margaret Roland believe that Van Dyck attended the studio of the master of Antwerp from 1613. They support the theory according to which the two were in strict contact for a prolonged period of time.
Given its force, which almost resulted in savagery, and the total absence of idealisation, this painting ultimately evokes the tumultuous art of another famous portraitist, the painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) (ill. 8). This audacious, anachronistic and possibly provocative association is aimed at underlining the power and virtuosity which characterised the art of both these artists despite the centuries that separated them. This portrait of the apostle Saint Peter offers an almost brutal and unconventional composition conceived by a young, daring artist whose œuvre revolutionised the history of art and its canons.
Maxime Georges Métraux
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