WEST JONES ADVISORS
ANTHONY VAN DYCK
The Iconography
In the last decade of his life, acclaimed painter Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) began a printmaking project that would change the conventions of portraiture: the Iconography— a series of over 100 portrait prints that radically depicted artists on par with the most significant monarchs, diplomats, and scholars of the day.
Producing the Iconography involved a number of stages: first drawing the portrait, then a grisaille oil sketch, and finally either the etching or engraving of the print. Van Dyck’s prints in the Iconography are etchings but the other prints in the collection are engravings. Most famously, the title page is a self-portrait of Van Dyck’s head, which was transformed into a bust on a pedestal by Jacques Neeffs.
Title page of Van Dyck’s Iconography, 1650-51
Anthony Van Dyck and Jacob Neeffs
Etching and engraving, title page of the edition published by Henricus and Cornelius Verdussen, New Hollstein, no. 1, State vi/vii
Plate: 9 5/8 x 6 3/16 inches Page: 14 3/4 x 9 5/8 inches
Signed at center: Ant van Dyck fecit aqua forti; at left: Ant. Van Dyck; at lower left: Iac. Neeffs sculpsit; in lower cartouche: ANTVERPIAE Henricus & Cornelius Verdussen excudunt
