(Antwerp 1599–1641 London)
Saint Andrew,
oil on panel, 63.5 x 47.6 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Morris I. Kaplan (1904–1966), Chicago;
his sale, Sotheby’s, London, 12 June 1968, lot 33 (as Anthony van Dyck);
Private collection, England;
sale, Bonham’s, London, 5 July 2017, lot 26 (as Studio of Anthony van Dyck);
where bought by the present owner

We are grateful to Susan Barnes, who has examined the work in the original and has confirmed the attribution to van Dyck, placing this panel of Andrew the Apostle within the painter’s first Antwerp period.

Christopher Brown has also confirmed the attribution to van Dyck after inspection of the original. He compares the present work to a further version of the composition, considered autograph, in the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. Brown considers the present lot finer than the Ponce picture.

Malcolm Rogers also confirms the attribution of the present panel on the basis of photographs.

Van Dyck personally executed many paintings of apostles, which are grouped together according to the collections in which they were conserved. The largest is the Böhler series of twelve apostles, named after the Munich Art dealer who bought them in 1914 from a Genoese noble family. Another series of five Apostles are named for their former location at Althorp House, and another five for their current location in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. The Böhler series is generally thought to be the earliest of the autograph versions – the ex Böhler St. Andrew now being conserved in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida (inv. no. SN 227).

The apostles are a number of male types, in which van Dyck’s physiognomic interest is unmistakable. The present picture would have functioned as a record of one of these types for use in the artist’s history paintings.Van Dyck, who was described by Peter Paul Rubens in a letter as ‘his most gifted pupil’ appears to have been inspired by his teacher’s series of apostles executed in 1610 for the Duke of Lerma, the so-called Apostolado Lerma now in the Prado. Rubens wrote at the time that he had a second series ‘fatto de mei discepoli’. Whether van Dyck was one of those particular discepoli is not known, but he would have surely seen the master’s other assistants executing versions in Rubens’s workshop. Two of the types in van Dyck’s series, Christ and Saint James, are derived from Rubenesque models. Van Dyck frequently made autograph repetitions and second versions throughout his career but did so particularly with religious works during his first Antwerp period when he was both establishing a clientele and defining his style vis-à-vis that of his master. Barnes points out, for example, Van Dyck’s several different versions of Saint Sebastian and Saint Jerome. Referring to the present lot, she remarks on the quality of the handling of the flesh and drapery, the facial expression and the picture’s overall emotional power. Apparent also in the present picture is not only the influence of the brilliant colouring, so characteristic of Rubens, but also the unique eye of a young painter that saw nobility in the human presence.

Andrew, who stands out among the apostles for having a Greek rather than Hebrew derived name, was the brother of Peter. According to Orthodox tradition he is regarded as the founder of the See of Byzantium, and thus his apostolic successor is the present Patriarch of Constantinople. His attribute of a crux decussata, now known as a Saint Andrew’s cross, was only fixed iconographically in the Middle Ages. It is said that, rather like his brother Peter who was said to have requested to have been crucified upside down, Andrew did not see himself as being worthy of being crucified in the same manner as Christ and so was executed on the x-shaped cross he carries in the present picture.