On his return from Italy, Anthony van Dyck looks back for a moment. We don’t have any correspondence from him, but more than one novelist has filled those gaps, why can’t we do the same?

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Anthony van Dyck says in September 1627:

I am so happy to be back in Antwerp after 6 years in Italy!

I walk through the city, and I look back in time: so much has happened in my life and I still have to turn thirty!

On the edge of Market square/Grote Markt I’m shown the house ‘The Bear Dance’ where I am supposed to be born on 22 March 1599. A day later I was baptized in the Church of Our Lady. As a newborn I don’t remember that.
Around Christmas of the same year, my father Franchois and mother Maria Cuypers, moved to the large house ‘Saint Paul in the Castle at Lille’ on the Short New Street/Korte Nieuwstraat (disappeared now, it was house number 42).

That, I do remember well: my father and mother had a successful trade there. And so they also bought the neighbouring house ‘The City of Ghent’.

My mother ran her own haberdashery shop: linen, knitwear, ribbons, lace, needles, all of it elegant. Did I adopt some gallantry from that? I’m not contradicting you.

When I turned eleven, I was already an apprentice to master Hendrick van Balen at the Long New Street/Lange Nieuwstraat (house number 78, disappeared). He allowed me to paint my first self-portrait in 1613.
What I’m showing you here is from a few years later, I think, 1615 or 1616. A that time I was already working with Jan Brueghel and Herman Servaes was my first pupil. However, it was not until February 11, 1618, that I became master in the Guild of St. Luke. I was ahead of my time.

Was my father so far-sighted as to have me emancipated as adult almost simultaneously, five days later? I think so; it allowed me to defend his interests more than once before the aldermen!

Back to my portrait. It was in those years that I could work with the greatest of our painters: you know that I‘m talking about Master Pietro Pauolo Rubens. He gave me ideas, allowed me to work out his sketches and praised me as ‘meglior mio discepulo‘, shortly before we won the project of the Jesuits.
Like him, I travelled to Italy, to work there, let’s be clear!
Now that Rubens often works directly for our Archdukes, the commissions for paintings end up with all his able assistants.

Am I ambitious? Yes, I admit so. Am I as lucky in love? That you can doubt. I have seen and painted the ladies of aristocracy, over there in Italy and here in the Low Countries. I portrayed them with great love and affection; but in the end, we are only middle-class, bourgeois men, children of merchants, suppliers of decoration…

If I could look into the future?

I’ve been able to put some savings aside. As soon as the city issues another loan, I’ll join the investors.

And would it be a good idea to return to London? Fashion is evolving over there and gaining in colour; that’s a dream for a creative painter!

From here you can continue on the short trail that takes you to the Cathedral of Our Lady.