Anthony Van Dyck (studio di)

(Anversa, 1599 - Londra, 1641)

Bibliografia
The 17th Century the Golden Age of Flemish painting, introduzione di Roger D'Hulst, Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo, 9 aprile - 26 giugno 1988, , cat. n. 23, tav. 23, illustrato a colori (come Anthony Van Dyck, studio);
Arnout Balis, Van Dyck: some problems of attribution, in Van Dyck 350, Symposium Papers XXVI, (1991), National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994, pp. 180 - 183, illustrato a colori;
J. Douglas Stewart, Pieter Thys (1624-1677). Recovering a scarcely known Antwerp painter, in Apollo, The International Magazine of the Arts, February, 1997, pp. 41, 42, fig. 8, illustrato a colori.

Il dipinto Scena di martirio di un Santo alla presenza di Sant'Antonio, che qui si presenta, è un'opera di importanza rilevante nell'ambito della pittura fiamminga del secolo diciassettesimo.La pala è stata esposta nel 1988 nella mostra The 17th Century the Golden Age of Flemish Painting, al Fuji Art Museum di Tokyo, con l'attribuzione Anthony Van Dyck, studio.Si riporta per esteso la scheda del catalogo: "The subject matter in the painting is the martyrdom of a saint associated with the representation of amystical monk. In the first part of the work, the torture of the saint is depicted powerfully. Angels are descending on the scene so as to bear witness to the sacred and glorious nature of his sacrifice. A Franciscan appears in the second part of the picture. He is praying with intense devotion before the altar. In the Southern Netherlands, saint's lives belong to current religious iconography. However, this type of figuration was criticized by Counter Reformation specialists who rejected the too fictitious and legendary side of their lives. The guilds had a particular taste for the pictorial representation of their Patron Saint's life and especially its most elevated and spectacular episode: the martyrdom. Moreover, all religious confraternities: Carmelites, Franciscans, Benedictines, Augustinians, etc., liked to magnify the heroism of their martyrised missionaries and converts. Jesuits and Franciscans were sent to preach the Gospel to countries and continents like Japan and Eastern Asian where they often found their violent and forced death. Considering its large size, we assume that the painting was to be placed in a religious edifice and to be admired at a distance. The faithful had to be impressed by the heroic action associated with the defence of the religion. Raising his eyes to heaven and falling into a swoon, the saint appears in mystical ecstasies representative of the subjects of the baroque art in the Southern Netherlands. That type of grandiloquent and moralizing representation plays a great part in glorifying monastic life and action. The scene is painted in rather neutral hues enhanceing the carnation. Some details, e.g. angel's faces, are pleasant and boldly drawn. The psychological feelings are rendered correctly therefore showing the artist's talent as a clever observe. According to Colonel Wegg (or Vegé) (sic), the painting can undoubtedly be attributed to Van Dyck: it is dated 1623. But we have to be careful because actually nothing else comes to prove the attribution apart from these statements. In the present stage of the research, we rather have to consider that it has been produced in his studio. The subject matter of the picture and the way it has been dealt with are interesting from the point of view for their iconographic content, the shapes implying more ideas and events than a deep spiritual or artistic outburst".
Nel 1991, nell'ambito del Symposium "Van Dyck 350" Arnout Balis propose l'attribuzione del dipinto a Pieter Thys (1624-1677). Si riporta qui la parte del suo scritto relativa alla nostra pala: "A painting depicting The Martyrdom of an Unknown Saint in the Presence of Saint Anthony in a private collection in Brussels has attracted little attention. This canvas was offered for sale in Brussels in 1925 as by Van Dyck. When it was exhibited in 1988 in Tokyo, the attribution was toned down to "studio of Van Dyck". "Follower" would have been more appropriate, since Pieter Thys (1624-1677), who I think is the author of this altarpiece, apparently never worked with Van Dyck, although he closely modeled his style on Van Dyck's. The ecstatic head of the martyr makes this dependence abundantly clear. The sentimental expression and sfumato treatment make the initial attribution of this canvas to Van Dyck himself somewhat understandable, but Thys' drawing in other parts is rather heavy, and the modeling unwieldy. Typical motifs we encounter in other works by Thys are the leftmost angel in the sky, who reappears in his Saint Adrian (Saint Peter's church, Ghent), and the executioner, who plays a similar role in his Crucifixion of Saint Peter. The general conception of the composition may be compared to Thys' Martyrdom of Saint Benedict - Saint Benedict the martyr, not the monk - a canvas with similar dimensions in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Here also we find the anachronistic combination of an early Christian martyr and a saint of the order of Saint Francis. Given the similarity in iconography as well as in composition and size, one might be tempted to suppose that both paintings belong together, but apparently this was not the case: the Martyrdom of Saint Benedict can be traced to the Brussels Capucin church, and the detailed eighteenth-century descriptions of that church do not refer to a painting like the one here under scrutiny.
Nel 1997 J. Douglas Stewart riprendeva la proposta di attribuzione a Pieter Thys in un suo scritto sulla rivista Apollo: "At the Fondation Coppée, Brussels, is The martyrdom of an unknown St. in the presence of Saint Anthony once given to Van Dyck but now rightly to Pieter Thys. There are striking similarities with Rubens' Martyrdom of St George (Bordeaux), painted for St Gummarus, Lier, about 1615. In both, a kneeling half-naked saint looks up imploringly. In the Rubens a man binds the saint from behind with a rope. In the Thys a man stands behind the saint but uses the rope to strangle him. The Rubens was not engraved, but Thys could have seen it while working on his Berlaar Martyrdom of St Peter, just a few miles away. Vlieghe noted that Rubens modelled St George's head on the Uffizi Dying Alexander. Thys' saint's head also derives from that source but from a different angle. Thys must have made his own drawing, presumably from a cast of the Antique model. That drawing is lost, but a study for the Coppée picture does survive, at Windsor Castle, the verso of a double-sided sheet of black chalk drawings, now catalogued as 'copies after Van Dyck'. Two are studies for putti at the upper left in the Coppée painting; and the third drawn putto may be a study for the third painted putto, although they do not correspond precisely. The weighty, fleshy, Windsor putti are cousins of the Ashmolean cupids. There are also similarities in handling between the two drawings, but the shadows are less granular in the Windsor drawing because the paper is smoother. The drawing on the recto of the Windsor sheet is connected with a painting sold recently at Sotheby's, New York. But there are major differences, indicating that the drawing is not a copy of, but a study for, the painting. The auction catalogue cited Larsen and Barnes, who accepted the work as a Van Dyck, the former as 1630-32, the latter 1624. Barnes suggested that 'since the verso of the [Windsor] drawing is filled with studies of... angels which relate to paintings for Palermo [sic], the... portrait may have been painted [in] 1624'. She also compared the pose with Van Dyck's Portrait of Ottavio Canevaro".
Va segnalato tuttavia che il dipinto, pur se attribuito a Thys, presenta caratteri stilistici fortemente dipindenti da Van Dyck, come si evince dal confronto con opere certe del maestro quali Il Martirio di San Sebastiano della National Gallery of Scotland, Edimburgo.