Exhibitions 2
Van Dyck in Genoa (Palazzo Ducale, Piazza Matteotti, Genoa, till 13 July)
Dynastic statements
Bruce Boucher
Van Dyck's 'Noble Genoese Woman and Daughter', Cleveland Museum of Art an Dyck in Genoa celebrates the emergence of a painter, familiar to us as Charles I's court artist, by examining his formative years in Italy. Set in the opulent apartments of the Ducal Palace, the exhibi- tion has assembled some 40 works by van Dyck with an equal number of artists rang- ing from Rubens and Caravaggio to the young Bernardo Strozzi and Cornelis de Wael; it not only traces the evolution of the painter during the crucial decade of the 1620s, but also illuminates a network of power and patronage not dissimilar to the one exploited by van Dyck after his arrival in London in 1632.
Genoa was the first Italian city van Dyck saw, and he returned to it periodically between trips that took him as far afield as Venice and Palermo. More oligarchy than republic, the state was dominated by a few powerful families, actively promoting their own status through the accoutrements of wealth: foreign titles, vast estates, new palaces and, of course, art. The exhibition establishes this context by recreating the picture gallery of one of the great magnates of van Dyck's day, Giovanni Carlo Doria. It's a genial idea for orientation and helps to explain why van Dyck spent so much time in Genoa. There are brooding narra- tives by Caravaggio and Gentileschi, altar- pieces by Vouet, and, above all, some of Rubens's greatest portraits.
Rubens's Genoese portraits established a frame of reference for van Dyck's, but the differences seem as salient as any initial similarity. In works like 'Maria Serra Pallavicino' (on loan from Kingston Lacy), Rubens conveyed a sense of highly keyed energy, the sunny optimism of a grande dame seated with a parrot in an imposing gallery. Van Dyck's Paolina Adorno Brig- nole Sale' takes up Rubens's formula but inverts it, for the sitter has vacated her chair to the parrot, seen nonchalantly shed- ding its feathers. The columnar hall and red drapery are present; yet, like the woman's richly embroidered dress, every- thing contrives to be understated and fash- ionably melancholic when compared with Rubensian flamboyance. Van Dyck could, of course, indulge in his own bravura, as with the outstanding 'Elena Grimaldi Cat- taneo' from Washington, where the sub- ject's sober attire and haughty expression are thrown into relief by a brilliant red parasol opening like a sunburst behind her head. There is more than an element of fantasy in the setting as it appears to be a magnificent loggia in an unspecified, rustic scene, and the attendant African page, decked in outlandish finery, has the point- ed ears of a faun.
There was a strong current of wishfulfil- ment in van Dyck's Genoese portraits, par- ticularly in the uniformly tall, elegant proportions of his subjects; a decade later, he would work the same magic on the ver- tically challenged king and queen of Eng- land. But what emerges clearly from the Genoese exhibition is the premium placed upon portraits as dynastic statements. The names themselves read like an Almanache de Gotha of the upper strata of Genoese society: Spinola, Doria, Balbi constantly recur in the hybrid nomenclature of the labels. Similarly, portraits of children can be interpreted as the ultimate fashion accessory as well as an affirmation of bloodlines. This point is well established by the placing of three of the finest group por- traits on one wall in the manner of a trip- tych. In the centre is the magnificent Tomellini Family' from Edinburgh, a work composed around the seated figure of Bar- bara Spinola Lomellini, flanked by her two small children and two grown stepsons, one of whom, a veteran of the war with Savoy in 1625, is dressed in armour and holds a broken lance. To the right hangs a study of a small boy from Dublin while on the left is the 'De Franchi Children' from the Nation- al Gallery. Unidentified, the Dublin boy dominates a large canvas in a vivid red out- fit, already conscious of his role in society, while the eldest of the De Franchi children points gravely at two ravens perched on a stairway, not as pets but as the heraldic device of his family.
Van Dyck in Genoa addresses the artist's achievements in fields rarely called upon in his career, namely, religious and secular narratives. The influence of Venetian art comes across strongly in devotional works like 'Christ and the Money Lenders' or in a rare allegorical work, 'The Three Ages of Man', from Vicenza. Such paintings are steeped in Titian's style and reflect van Dyck's aspiration to transcend portrait painting. He must have had high hopes of this when he quit Genoa in 1627; ironically, neither Antwerp nor Caroline England allowed much scope for these gifts, and it is as a portraitist that van Dyck owes his posthumous fame. Despite that, Genoa has mounted a splendid tribute to the artist, and one of this exhibition's many merits is to offer us a glimpse of what Anton van Dyck was like before he became Sir Anthony.
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