Eye Contact
Peter Campbell
- Anthony van Dyck 1599-1641 by Christopher Brown and Hans Vlieghe
Royal Academy, 360 pp, £22.50, May 1999, ISBN 0 8478 2196 X - Anthony van Dyck: A Life, 1599-1641 by Robin Blake
Constable, 435 pp, £25.00, August 1999, ISBN 0 09 479720 X
Sincerity and curiosity are virtues in painting; but so are grace, nobility and even the kindness that comes close to being flattery. ‘Van Dyck,’ Roger de Piles noted, ‘took his time to draw a face when it had its best looks on.’ He painted Charles I’s Queen, Henrietta Maria, as a handsome woman – without, it would seem, losing the likeness. Yet her niece, who knew her first from the painting, was surprised to find the Queen ‘a little woman with long, lean arms, crooked shoulders and teeth protruding from her mouth like guns from a fort.’
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