Van Dyck and Tapestry
September 7 2012
Picture: Tate/Lord Sackville/National Trust
Regular readers will know that I'm slightly obsessed with Van Dyck. So allow me to recommend a fascinating article online at Tate by Simon Turner which looks at Van Dyck's relationship with the Mortlake tapestry workshop. Turner builds on the theory that Van Dyck may have first been invited to England, in 1620, specifically to design tapestries, an intriguing idea which has some merit, especially when one sees the fluidity of handling and composition of The Continence of Scipio [Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford], one of few pictures we now were painted during Van Dyck's first brief stay in England. The article also reproduces a tapestry [above] featuring Van Dyck's Self-Portrait with Endymion Porter [Prado] in what was most likely its original frame (the one around it now is later, and entirely lacking in oomph). A similar frame is still to be found around Van Dyck's last Self-Portrait.
