THE JOURNEY TO ITALY
It was the habit of most Northern artists at that time to make a journey in Italy. The renown of the works created during the preceding two centuries by the Italian Renaissance had spread all over Europe, and no young artist considered his education complete without having spent a few years in studying them. Moreover, they found that patrons patronised them better if they had been through this Italian training. These ideas were rather dictated by the prevailing fashion than by any solid good to be derived by the artist who underwent it. We have innumerable examples of Dutchmen and Flemings whose natural genius became perverted upon Italian soil. Nicholas Berchem and Karl Dujardin were striking examples of the sad results which frequently accrued from thus transplanting themselves into a country with which their temperament had nothing in common. It is probable that had Karl Dujardin remained in Holland, the world would have been enriched by a landscape painter of the first order, for he had gifts far above even the average painter of his time. But immediately on reaching Italy he succumbed to the influences surrounding him, and endeavoured to get rid as far as possible of his early training, and to see things and render them in the Italian way. The result was, that whilst he never threw off the Dutch character of his scenes and figures, he enveloped them with a conventional atmosphere as monotonous as it is untrue.
We have already seen the results the Italian journey had upon Rubens. There was no inducement for Van Dyck, comparing, as he would be able to, his master's pictures painted before his journey to Italy and those which he executed afterwards, to undertake the same trouble. It is rather to be thought that he was decided to see the artistic Mecca for himself, by the glowing accounts of its treasures that he heard from time to time from Rubens' own lips. For the latter, small as had been the influence of the great Italian masters upon his work, was nevertheless of a disposition peculiarly adapted for keenly appreciating merit whenever it was brought under his notice. We can quite imagine that during those early days in Antwerp his pupils whilst at work would hear innumerable accounts of the beauties of this or that picture, and the more enthusiastic of them would consequently only be the more eager to judge of its beauties for themselves. During the execution of the large canvasses that were turned out in such quantities from the studio, Rubens doubtlessly prefaced alterations he made by referring to many a master's method, and recounted how the masterpieces upon which his comments were framed had been brought to completion.
During the latter portion of the time Van Dyck stopped with Rubens he was only acting as his assistant, and consequently would be free to leave when he liked. He would probably be quite aware that his technique was the equal of his master's, and would realise that he had received all the tuition he possibly could in his present situation. Ambitious as he was, there is no doubt that he yearned for an opportunity to learn for himself the message the great masters had to impart to him. Whilst we can quite imagine that Rubens would be sorry to part with so capable an assistant, there was not any evidence that he did not do everything in his power to assist him to carry out his project.
In 1623—when he was but twenty-four years of age—Van Dyck left Antwerp on his journey southward. He appears not to have got any further than a village near Brussels, where he succumbed to the attractions of a certain young lady named Annah van Ophem. At her instigation he painted two pictures for the parish church there. In one, representing St. Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar, he took himself as a model for the saint. The parish authorities being, it is said, of a mercenary turn of mind, had it valued, and, hearing that it was worth 4000 florins, sold it to a M. Hoët. The people of the village, however, hearing of the sale, determined to prevent the removal of the picture at all costs, and when the purchaser arrived he found not only the peasants, but their wives and children, armed, and was obliged to escape ignominiously through the priest's garden and return to Brussels without his prize. Whilst still residing at the village, Van Dyck painted the portrait of Annah van Ophem, surrounded with the dogs belonging to the Infanta Isabella, of which either she or her father had charge, and a picture of the Holy Family, in which she figured as the principal personage.
PLATE IV.—PORTRAIT OF VAN DYCK (OR THE ARTIST)
(In Lord Spencer's Collection, Althorp)
One of the most striking portraits of the artist. Painted at a fairly late date in his career, it shows the painter prosperous and rich and by no means ill pleased with his lot in the world. Full of life and gaiety, his joyous face gives us a good idea of the gratification he found in life almost to the end. Indeed, a deal of the fascination of his art arises from his approaching his subjects in this happy frame of mind.
Rubens, hearing of the prolonged sojourn of his pupil at Saveltheim, arrived one day upon the scene, and finally induced Van Dyck to tear himself from his mistress and continue his journey to Italy.
The great object of his visit was to study the Venetian masters, and accordingly he repaired forthwith to the City of the Lagoons. We can picture him standing for the first time before those wonderful portraits of Titian and Tintoretto, Palma-Vecchio and Moroni, about which he had heard so much in his student days in Antwerp. That he was not disappointed is evidenced by the fact that almost immediately a change is observable in his method. He cast aside as speedily as possible the silveriness and coolness which had characterised his palette when working in Antwerp, and endeavoured to assimilate in as great a degree as possible the golden luminosity and subtle handling of the mighty Venetians. It is probable that Titian held the first place in his estimation, for it is rather upon his method that all his subsequent developments in technique are based. But perhaps full justice has not been done to the influence Moroni had in moulding his youthful genius. One has only to compare, for example, the full-length portrait of an Italian nobleman, No. 1316 in the National Gallery, with that marvellous representation of Philip le Roy in the Wallace Collection, reproduced in this volume, to see the connection between the two painters. There is the same air of distinction in each portrait, and in silveriness of colouring and elegance of pose there is much in common. These are not isolated examples in the life-work of the two masters, but are rather representative of a whole series of portraits in which their genius runs on nearly parallel lines.
We cannot wonder that Van Dyck was not much impressed by such of the Umbrian painters as he came in contact with. There was still left in these men the remains of that mysticism which was born of the intimate contact with religion in relation to life that had originally brought it into being. The religious art of the Netherlands—I am speaking now of that which arose after the middle of the sixteenth century—was built upon a purely human and materialistic basis. If a scriptural scene was represented it was brought before us as a subject from everyday life; a martyrdom with all its brutality, a crucifixion with all its physical horror, and a madonna and child simply as a peasant girl with a child, set in homely surroundings. Our artist, endowed with the same temperament as the men who had created such works, and who moreover was perhaps the best exponent of this school of painting, with the possible exception of Rubens himself, could not be expected to be touched with the subtleties of Botticelli or Filippino Lippi. Further, it is not unlikely that he found he could learn little from the technique of Raphael or Andrea del Sarto. But with the Venetians it was quite otherwise. From the early days of Giovanni Bellini they seem to have treated religious subjects in just as materialistic a manner, if less grossly and repugnantly, than the Flemings themselves. One has but to contemplate the life-work of Titian to see how little religious feeling, in the Florentine or mystical sense of the term, there was in his art. Even the two most impressive religious pictures he ever painted, the "Entombment," in the Louvre, and the "Christ crowned with Thorns," at Munich, would certainly not have pleased the patrons of Ghirlandajo or Pollaiuolo. But Titian and his contemporaries constitute the zenith attained by Italian materialistic art, at any rate in point of technique.
PLATE V.—PHILIPPE LE ROY, SEIGNEUR DE RAVEL
(In the Wallace Collection)
The masterpiece of Van Dyck's second Flemish manner. In it we see the culmination of the influences he had brought away with him from Italy sobered by a renewed contact with the productions of his illustrious master. The dignity of pose, probably derived from Moroni and Titian, united with the fact that his immense technical powers are brought into play in an unsurpassed degree, certainly proclaim it as one of the greatest portraits in the world. Van Dyck executed an etching of Philippe le Roy, probably based upon this portrait which ranks very high amongst his productions in this way.
It is more than probable that Van Dyck found certain points in his master's method crude compared with that of the Venetians, and although, as we shall see later, he endeavoured after his return to Flanders to retrace his steps in a measure, the influences he brought away with him from Italy remained during his whole life.
He went from Venice to Genoa, and there his style created such an impression that he found many of the nobility eager to have their portraits painted by him. Formerly, his Italian manner, as it is called, was to be best studied in that city, but as years have rolled on many of the finest examples have become scattered over Europe and America. The two fine portraits recently added to the National Gallery date from this period, and although, owing to their condition, they do not set forth his talents at their best, will give a good idea of the changes his method had undergone since he left Antwerp. Two of the noblest portraits of the Genoese period were formerly in the collection of Sir Robert Peel, but, after being sold at auction in London some few years ago, finally found a permanent home in the Berlin Gallery.
From Genoa he went to Rome, and, his reputation having preceded him, he was soon loaded with commissions for both historical subjects and portraits. It is said, however, that his residence here was rendered unpleasant by a number of artists persecuting him by reason of his not wishing to fall in with their methods of life. Be this as it may, he returned to Genoa, and after some time departed for Palermo; but the plague breaking out, some time after his arrival, he determined to return to Flanders. Van Dyck had reason to congratulate himself, not only upon the amount of benefit which he had received from his sojourn in Italy, but also on account of the flattering manner in which he had been received everywhere. His complete success in these two respects was calculated to infuse confidence in him for the future. He was now fully equipped in every way, and his good luck in the matter of patronage, so lavishly bestowed upon him in Italy, was destined to pursue him in his future career, until finally the immense amount of work he undertook in consequence had an adverse influence upon his later productions.