The Art Newspaper

Van Dyck in Sicily: Painting and the Plague, 1624-25

Until 27 May 12

dulwich. Following in the footsteps of his master, Rubens, as well as those of many another artists of the period, Van Dyck undertook an Italian tour that began in 1621 and lasted nearly six years.

One stop on this tour was Palermo, where he arrived in the spring of 1624 at the invitation of the Viceroy of Sicily, Emmanuel-Filiberto of Savoy (1588-1624).

Van Dyck’s portrait of the viceroy is in the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s collection and appears in this exhibition alongside the armour he wears in the portrait, made by the Maestro del Castello di Tre Torri, 1606, on loan from the Armeria Real, Madrid.

Towards mid-May the plague struck the city, which was put under quarantine. However, the discovery of St Rosalia’s remains in a grotto on nearby Monte Pellegrino brought an abatement of the plague and the expansion of her cult.

Van Dyck executed five commissions to represent her as an intercessor, all of which have, uniquely, been brought together for this show.

In July, the 25-year-old Van Dyck visited the 90-year-old Italian artist Sofonisba Anguissola, whose portrait, 1624, on loan from the Sackville Collection, Knole, is also on show.

(Van Dyck’s Italian sketchbook includes notes on his conversations with the artist.) His major Sicilian commission was the large altarpiece, The Madonna of the Rosary, 1624-27, for the Oratory of the Rosary (in situ), which was completed after Van Dyck had prudently withdrawn to Genoa in 1625 to avoid a recrudescence of the plague.

The former chief curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Xavier Salomon, now the curator of European art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bids farewell with this, his final exhibition in the south London gallery.

It is sponsored by Arturo and Holly Melosi, who endowed Salomon’s Dulwich curatorship, and is the second in a series under their patronage (the first, in 2010, was on Salvator Rosa, also designed by Salomon).

This show has received additional help from the American Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery, Inc. and the Arthur and Holly Magill Foundation. n Donald Lee Categories: Old Master Thematic

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