European Drawings - 1, Catalogue of the Collections

(Darren Dugan) #1

dence, Rhode Island School of Design; Vey 1962, no. 7).
The addition of touches of color is found once more in
the Entombment drawing in the Teylers Stichting,
Haarlem.
The sequence of the various Entombment studies is
difficult to ascertain. Very possibly, the drawing known
through the Ecole des Beaux-Arts copy was done first,
followed by the Teylers sheet. At this point van Dyck ap-
pears to have taken an interest in Titian's famous painting
of the subject (Paris, Louvre), turning the body of Christ
outward and adding the powerful figure of the man at
his feet. In the Museum's recto the poignant gesture of
Christ's limp right hand and the rendering of his head in
shadow are features derived from Titian's painting.
Lastly, the planar presentation of the figures reflects this
distinguished precedent. As the most developed of the
various drawings of this theme by van Dyck, the Mu-
seum's sheet would logically come near the end of the
evolution of his ideas, a sequence that is made still more
probable by van Gelder's observation concerning the fig-
ure of the Virgin. It is possible that van Dyck never ex-
ecuted a painting to follow these drawings, or that the
composition was altered further and developed into the
Lamentation (Munich, AltePinakothek),^2 which contains
some of its elements.



  1. The sheet was lifted from its mount in 1985 by Alexander
    Yow, revealing a further sketch of the same subject in black
    chalk at the left.

  2. G. Gltick, Van Dyck, Des Meisters Gemalde, Klassiker der
    Kunst (Stuttgart, 1931), no. 8.


194 FLEMISH SCHOOL • VAN DYCK
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