Page:Van Dyck and portrait engraving and etching in the seventeenth century (IA vandyckportraite00hind).pdf/9

 VAN DYCK

HE art of portrait undoubtedly reached its zenith in the seventeenth century. Even the splendour of the North Italians in the sixteenth century cannot rival a period which boasts of Velazquez, Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt. And in respect of human characterisation, which must be the final criterion of good portraiture, the artists of the Netherlands went far beyond the more decorative ideals of the Italians.

Rubens and Velazquez produced no engraved or etched portraits, unless we accept as by Velazquez a rare etching of the Duke of Olivarez in Berlin, which is far more probably by the hand of Ottavio Leoni (xxxviii), and placed for comparison next to Leoni’s portrait of himself in our plates. Van Dyck and Rembrandt are, without qualification, the two greatest painters who have also produced original portraits in etching. There can be little question about Rembrandt’s greater genius and personality, but in spite of that admission I would claim for Van Dyck an even more remarkable position than Rembrandt as the etcher of portraits par excellence. Rembrandt’s portraits form only a small part of his complete etched work, which will be fully illustrated in another volume of this series. We limit ourselves here on that account to giving one of his most characteristic plates, that of Jan Sylvius (xxiv), merely as a basis for comparision with Van Dyck, whose etched work is reproduced in full in the present volume. The difference of their style will be at once evident. Rembrandt in this example and in the majority of his later portraits uses a close mesh of fine lines, by which he renders the subtlest varieties of chiaroscuro. Even the secondary parts of his subject are often finished in the same detail, and the tendency is in general entirely analogous to his portrait painting, a concentration on the face by means of dark shadow in the other parts. But except where this concentration is absolutely obtained, as in the portrait of the Young Haaring, Rembrandt tends to express human character in its complexity, rather than to emphasise some central feature. Van Dyck is, perhaps, the more immediately convincing portrait etcher, for the very directness of his method of presentation. One feels far less subtlety and less depth in his expression of character; but he always gives the impression of having caught the outstanding feature of his subject. Moreover, considered as etching, his style is purer than Rembrandt’s. The open lineal method that he uses seems to me a far safer standard for etching than the more painter-like manner of Rembrandt. His concentration is obtained by the positive method 5