Van Dyck today is probably more admired as a painter than loved; Velazquez, with a far smaller output, stands higher. His gifts as a portrait painter have overshadowed his sometimes splendid religious and mythological pictures, making him appear much more single-track than he was in reality. Though he had an international career and was patronised by several courts, his life entirely lacks the span and colour of his master, Rubens, the Universal Man among Baroque artists.
Van Dyck died at 42, leaving behind him about 1,000 paintings - a remarkable number, even if he did use student assistants (so of course did Rubens and many others). Yet the man himself is rather shadowy, a figure in half-tones, and Robin Blake cannot quite touch him up into full colour. He has, however, written a lively and worthwhile book, even if there is a good deal of speculation (and some padding) on his subject's more obscure biographical areas.
He has discovered that, contrary to the accepted version, Van Dyck did number at least one professional painter among his ancestry. He was born in Antwerp, then the great trade emporium of Europe, the son of a cloth-merchant who had come up in the world before running into trouble financially. His mother died when he was seven, and he grew up under a stepmother who died rather young in turn. Young Antoon (his original name) became a Rubens pupil in his teens, at a time when Rubens was probably the most famous painter in Europe with a clientele which ranged over several countries and courts.
Van Dyck served his apprenticeship soundly and soon became his master's chief assistant - a considerable honour, since Rubens's assistants and collaborators included the cream of Flemish art. Van Dyck never possessed Rubens's epic breadth as a painter or his Homeric vitality, but arguably he had a more refined, aristocratic touch. The two men were opposites - Rubens was dynamic, expansive, self-promoting, a scholar and intellectual with a great range of interests including science, the confidant of princes, and an experienced diplomat and special agent.
Van Dyck, by contrast, was a much more private individual, with an almost feminine temperament and an unduly thin skin. Yet he, too, was ambitious and enterprising and with his eyes fixed on fame and success, both monetary and social. Almost from the start, Van Dyck knew his own worth and his own outstanding gifts. An early trip to England - probably instigated by an English noblewomen who had visited Antwerp - misfired and he left after a few months. A long visit to Italy was much more successful, especially in Genoa where he painted the international aristocracy of the day, the equivalent to today's jet set. The study of the works of Titian, and other Italian giants, at first hand also helped him to perfect one of the finest techniques in the whole of painting. The young artist's fame was now growing rapidly, and he became Rubens's successor as court painter in Brussels, then capital of the Spanish Netherlands.
It was a dullish court, however, and in his early 30s Van Dyck made his second visit to England, where he was patronised by Charles I and even became an intimate of the king - as intimate, that is, as Charles's shy, buttoned-up temperament permitted. The English, who had virtually spurned him earlier, now lionised Van Dyck, and the aristocracy found his quiet, refined manners and personal elegance highly congenial. They even anglicised his name - "Vandyke" remained the accepted version of it in Britain for nearly two centuries. England had virtually no good painters of its own, and even long after his death Kneller and Lely were filling the breach - though arguably Van Dyck founded a tradition of society portraiture which can be seen as late as Gainsborough's Blue Boy.
He earned big money and had to hire assistants, though his amorous life was unlucky, and he seems to have fallen into the hands of a famous courtesan, Margaret Lemon, who treated him cruelly and despotically. Charles and his French queen, Henrietta Maria, rescued him from this and other entanglements by finding him an aristocratic bride, Mary Ruthven, with whom he seems to have been happy.
But the times were turning bad: militant Puritanism was foaming up in England, his patron the king was under increasing pressure, and anti-Catholic feeling began to reach the upper limits of hysteria. Van Dyck, a sincere Catholic, was planning to leave England for good when he fell ill - from precisely what disease, it is not clear - and died on the day of his new-born daughter's funeral. Within a few years, England was plunged into civil war.
In a sense Van Dyck had been born into war and civil strife, since his native city, Antwerp, was an ignitionpoint in the Netherlandish rebellion against the rule of Philip II of Spain. Incidentally, in this connection Robin Blake makes much of the so-called "Spanish Fury" of the Duke of Alva's army and of the cruelty of the Inquisition. In fact, the Netherlands were merely part of Philip's far-flung hereditary provinces - they were not subject politically to Spain - and the Inquisition which tried (not with much success) to suppress Calvinism in the Low Countries was the local Flemish one, not the Spanish.
There is still much mythology around this strife-torn period of history. Alva's "Spanish Army" was largely composed of Flemings, Walloons and Germans - Spaniards made up only one-eighth of it - and the so-called Sack of Antwerp occurred because they had not been paid for many months and so resorted to mutiny, looting and burning. The Catholics of Antwerp suffered as badly as anyone else in this, including - ironically - the convents and Jesuit houses, which were destroyed or despoiled, sometimes both. At this late stage, historical stereotypes should not be allowed to overshadow known fact.
Brian Fallon is an author and critic