Dyck, Anthony van, Sir

Sir Anthony van Dyck (; Dutch: Antoon van Dyck [ˈɑntoːɱ‿vɑn ˈdɛik]; 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy. The seventh child of Frans van Dyck, a wealthy silk merchant in Antwerp, Anthony painted from an early age. He was successful as an independent painter in his late teens and became a master in the Antwerp Guild on 18 October 1617. By this time, he was working in the studio of the leading northern painter of the day, Peter Paul Rubens, who became a major influence on his work. Van Dyck worked in London for some months in 1621, then returned to Flanders for a brief time, before travelling to Italy, where he stayed until 1627, mostly in Genoa. In the late 1620s he completed his greatly admired Iconography series of portrait etchings of mainly other artists and other famous contemporaries. He spent five years in Flanders after his return from Italy, and from 1630 was court painter for the Archduchess Isabella, Habsburg Governor of Flanders. At the request of Charles I of England he returned in 1632 to London as the main court painter. With the exception of Holbein...