La Jornada: Exhibition in Genoa offers a political and cultural reinterpretation of Van Dyck’s work

Genoa. Until July 19 of this year, the Doge’s Palace of Genoa hosts the exhibition Van Dyck the European, curated by Anna Orlando and Katlijne Van der Stighelen, two of the world’s leading experts on the flamenco maestro. The exhibition offers a political and cultural reinterpretation of his career, presenting him as one of the first authentically European artists to know how to navigate the “crisis of the 17th century”, a concept coined by Eric Hobsbawm to describe the profound transformations of a time marked by the 30 Years War, financial crises and the slow transition towards capitalist modernity.

Far from the image of a superficial painter fascinated by silks and luxury, the exhibition reveals an artist whose extraordinary ability to adapt was his greatest weapon of survival. His pictorial language was forged in the great European metropolises – Antwerp, Genoa and London – where he designed the visual identity of the elites of his time without ever giving up his own personality.

Antwerp

Van Dyck’s biography is not a sequence of triumphs in the European courts, but a prism to observe his time. As Hans Cools points out in the catalogue, historians such as Geoffrey Parker attribute part of the upheavals of the 17th century to the “little ice age”, whose climatic alterations caused crop failures, famines and epidemics that exacerbated European conflicts. Van Dyck moved in this “catastrophic global situation”: from the plague that trapped him in Palermo in 1624 to the Spanish bankruptcy that destabilized Genoa in 1627. His constant nomadism was not the result of restlessness, but rather a sophisticated strategy in the face of a hostile environment.

Born in 1599, Van Dyck grew up in an Antwerp as artistically splendid as it was economically fragile. The crisis even hit his family: his father, a prosperous silk merchant, ended up bankrupt and saw his assets auctioned off. In that world of uncertainty, art became his main outlet for the young painter.

Trained in Rubens’ workshop, Van Dyck was the most brilliant disciple of the Flemish master. The two youthful self-portraits present in the exhibition reveal an exceptional precocity: although he fully assimilated Rubens’ language, he developed a more intimate and psychological sensitivity very early on. At the age of 18 he was already working as an independent teacher.

Genoa and Sicily

Van Dyck arrived in Genoa attracted by the opportunities offered by one of the great financial capitals of Europe. Genoa and Antwerp formed the financial axis of the Spanish monarchy, transforming Genoese bills of exchange into the resources necessary to support the Habsburg armies in northern Europe.

His characters, wrapped in very fine fabrics, were authentic stagings of social power. The magnificent Portrait of Maria Chiavari – whose identity has recently been recovered by Anna Orlando – illustrates how Van Dyck extended the prestigious full-length portrait, until then reserved for royalty, to the Genoese financial elite, turning it into an effective instrument of social legitimation.

But it was in Palermo where his art reached a particular mystical intensity, revealing a little-known and rarely exhibited religious production, one of the great contributions of this exhibition. During his stay, Van Dyck created the iconography of Saint Rosalía, who was then canonized after the discovery of her relics and has become the most venerated saint in the city to this day. By fusing ecstasy and baroque theatricality, the artist offered solace to a society that had been severely affected by the plague, creating a widely reproduced iconographic model that contributed decisively to the spread of his cult.

London

In London, Van Dyck reached the peak of his career under the patronage of Charles I, helping to build a sacralized image of a monarchy increasingly at odds with Parliament. The magnificent Portrait of Charles I y Enriqueta Maria It projects a serenity and authority that contrasts dramatically with the reality of an England torn by growing political and religious tensions between Anglicans, Puritans and Catholics. It is still disturbing that many of the characters portrayed by the artist – including the king himself, the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud – would end up beheaded during the civil war. Catholic in an officially Protestant country and increasingly hostile to any “popish” influence, Van Dyck found protection at the court of Charles I and the Catholic queen Henriette Mary, discreetly preserving his faith, as witnessed by the rosary carried by his wife Mary Ruthven in her portrait.

In London, Van Dyck revolutionized the artistic workshop through an almost industrial production system that allowed him to create nearly 400 portraits in seven and a half years; more than one per week. While the master reserved the faces and hands, specialized assistants completed the rest, making it difficult today to distinguish between originals and replicas. Also supported by a wide network of dealers, Van Dyck achieved unprecedented economic independence and anticipated modern forms of artistic management.

With his famous Iconography, Conceived and paid for by Van Dyck himself, it initially brought together 80 portraits – expanded to 100 after his death – of artists, princes, soldiers, statesmen and scholars. Thanks to these prints, much more accessible than his paintings, Van Dyck spread his fame throughout Europe and consolidated a portrait model that would influence for centuries.

Weakened by illness and unable to make his way into the French court of Louis Van Dyck died in London in 1641, aged 42, just eight days after the birth of his daughter Justina, leaving her and Maria Theresa, her 10-year-old natural daughter, orphaned; The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of both.