VAN DYCK, ANTON. - Painter, born in Antwerp on 22 March 1599, died in London on 9 December 1641.
He attended Rubens’ workshop in Antwerp, but by 1616 he had already opened his own studio; three years later he began an effective and appreciated collaboration with that great master. In 1620–21 he worked in London for James I and the Earl of Arundel; toward the end of 1621 he was in Italy, subsequently residing in Florence, Rome, Venice, Mantua, Parma, Naples, and Palermo; but especially in Genoa (1623–27), where he was greatly admired, he portrayed the likenesses of the city’s patricians and exerted a beneficial influence on local painters, particularly in the realm of portraiture.
After the years 1628–32 spent in Antwerp, in 1632 he was summoned to London by Charles I and appointed painter to the court. There he spent nearly all his remaining years, fulfilling an incessant demand for portraits of the sovereign and the aristocracy, which were often executed with the assistance of assistants, revealing a shift from the virtuoso harmony that had characterized the prodigious vein of a colorist so personal and refined. Among the outstanding male portraits, one may cite the superb Charles I of England (Louvre Museum), in hunting attire, with a prancing horse in the shadow of an emerald-green tree behind him; the young Lord Philip Wharton, known as “the gentleman with the spade” (Hermitage, Leningrad); the equestrian Duke Thomas of Savoy-Carignano (Pinacoteca, Turin); the thoughtful and candid Marquis Cattaneo (National Gallery, London); and the pale, bald Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio (Pitti Gallery, Florence). Nor are the female portraits less perceptive and evocative: his wife Maria Ruthven (Gallery in Munich); the dark-haired Princess Maria Luisa of Thurn and Taxis (Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna); the austere Princess Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, superior of the Poor Clares (Gallery in Parma); and the Princess of Orange, Amelia of Solms (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).
While Van Dyck, as a pupil of Rubens, does not assume in his sacred production the historical and aesthetic importance of the Antwerp master, and in the early cycle of the Twelve Apostles he does not stray far from his realistic forms nor imitate his passionate fervor in several Flagellations, Pietàs, Crucifixions, and Ecstasies of Saints, absolute originality and profound elegiac sentiment must instead be attributed to the Dead Christ in the Antwerp Museum, with the swarthy Nazarene lying on the dazzling white shroud. The influence of
Van Dyck, Anton - Christ Risen with Cross - Genoa, Palazzo Rosso, Galleria.
Italian schools, from Titian to Andrea del Sarto, is especially visible in the monumental Madonna of the Rosary (the namesake oratory in Palermo); more expressive are the Madonna and Child (National Gallery of Ancient Art, Rome); the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Munich); and the Virgin among Adoring Angels (Academy of St. Luke). They reach their peak in Samson and Delilah (London), St. Martin Dividing His Cloak (Windsor); and finally, the Capture of Christ (Prado Museum), where one sees how even elements borrowed from Rubens are employed in an emotional order, without the ghostly effect of the torches amid the gloomy foliage diminishing the radiant serenity of Christ, assailed on all sides in the tumult of outstretched arms and vociferating demonic faces. — See pl. XCII.
V. GOSPEL
The Gospel. — St. Luke, writing around the year 60, states that “many” before him had undertaken to narrate the deeds and teachings of Jesus. Among those many are to be counted St. Matthew and St. Mark; but there is still room for others, and it is possible, though not proven, that among them may be counted at least some of the authors of those so-called Gospels of the Hebrews, of the Ebionites, of the Egyptians, of which the Fathers have preserved some fragments. Be that as it may, among the many Gospels circulating between the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd, the Christian Church soon recognized as authentic—i.e., inspired by God and worthy of faith—only the four that, under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, still form today the common patrimony of all Christians. It should be noted, however, that in the numerous manuscripts of the original text, as well as in the official language of the Church and in its liturgy, they never bear any title other than “According to Matthew, According to Mark, According to Luke, According to John.” Thus it is affirmed that, as mentioned above, Jesus Himself is the true and sole author of the Gospel, and the four canonical books are merely four versions or four aspects of that single Gospel. St. Irenaeus (2nd century) gave this concept its definitive sculptural formulation, coining the felicitous phrase “tetramorphic Gospel,” i.e., “four-formed.”
Indeed, the Evangelists do not aim to recount everything they knew about the Divine Master, but only what was fitting and sufficient for establishing the faith and practice of Christian life. Thus they present the single Gospel each in a particular aspect according to specific purposes, and in good harmony they complement one another. As a literary form, their writings belong to that historical genre of “memorabilia,” which even in profane Greek literature has notable models. And in that genre they possess all its virtue and value: strict historical truth in the events and sublime teaching in the doctrine (v. also APOSTOLIC CATECHESIS; JOHN; LUKE; MARK; MATTHEW; SYNOPTICS).
DEMYTHOLOGIZATION OF THE GOSPEL. — Theory of the Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann (b. 1884, professor of New Testament exegesis at Marburg) under the dual influence of the historical-critical school of “form criticism” and the theological-philosophical current of existentialism, which is a compromise between Protestant orthodoxy and theological rationalism.
The rationalist element lies in the thesis, drawn from the comparative criticism of Christian sources, according to which the New Testament is deeply imbued with “mythical” conceptions about the structure of the world, of man, and the nature of salvation, which inform the apocalyptic literature of late Judaism and Hellenistic Gnosticism, and to which it gave expression. Therefore, the New Testament’s mode of thinking in images, in radical antithesis to that of modern man, who proceeds by scientific concepts, and an effective presentation of Christianity would require, as a preliminary step, its “demythologization,” its restatement in modern scientific terms, freeing the substance of the Gospel from mythical ideas. The demand of orthodoxy lies in the fact that Bultmann maintains the reality of the supernatural, reserving, however, the perception of the salvific fact of Christ solely to religious consciousness, not to historical consciousness, as an existential reality that responds to man’s despair of being lost and his anxiety to be saved. Therefore, the New Testament should above all present the existential situation.
VAN DYCK, ANTON — Portrait of William II of Orange and Mary Stuart — Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.