(Antwerp 1599–1641 London)
Portrait of Georg Petel (1601/2–1641)
oil on canvas, 73.5 x 61.5 cm, framed

The present painting is related to Anthony van Dyck’s Portrait of the Sculptor Georg Petel (Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek). The painting shows the Baroque sculptor Petel (Weilheim 1601/2–1634 Augsburg) as an elegantly dressed nobleman and might have been painted during Petel’s stay in Antwerp in 1628. Both the compositional conception as a bust against a neutral backdrop and the gaze, averted from the spectator and directed into the distance in order to suggest the sitter’s self-absorption, are typical features of van Dyck’s portraits of artists and also characterise, for example, his Portrait of Jacomo de Cachiopin from around 1634 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The latter painting also shows the sitter reaching into his cloak, a gesture inspired by Venetian portraits that was probably meant as an affirmation of the sitter’s sincerity.

The present painting is basically a faithful copy of van Dyck’s Munich painting, but is executed more liberally and summarily than the more detailed Munich painting, whose dimensions of 73.3 by 57.7 cm are almost identical to those of the present picture. In the present portrait, for instance, the accurately rendered buttons of the sitter’s coat in the original have been reduced to freely applied dots of colour that do not allow for any identification of details.