Flemish school, following models of VAN DYCK; second half of XVII century "Pietà". Oil on copper. It has frame of the nineteenth century. Measurements. 24 x 35 cm; 31 x 42 cm (frame). The present work closely follows a work by Anton van Dyck dated 1634

Flemish school, following models of VAN DYCK; second half of the 17th century.
"Pietà".
Oil on copper.
It has frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements. 24 x 35 cm; 31 x 42 cm (frame).
The present work closely follows a work by Anton van Dyck dated 1634, usually titled as "Descent from the Cross" and that, at present, is preserved in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (Germany). The work has a landscape background to place the scene, leaving the figures at large size and in the foreground: on one side, three kneeling angels appear, leading the viewer with their hands and gestures to the figure of Mary, dressed in a blue cloak, holding on her knees and with her hand the body of Christ, dead and lying on herself, resting the rest of the body on the white shroud, partially covering his nakedness with it. The scene of the lamentation or weeping over the body of the dead Christ is part of the cycle of the Passion, and is intercalated between the Descent from the Cross and the Holy Burial. It narrates the moment in which the body of Christ is deposited on a shroud (in other cases, on the stone of anointing) and they are arranged around him, bursting in laments and sobs, his mother, St. John, the holy women, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. It is a very emotional theme, fruit of popular piety, which concentrates the attention on the drama of the Passion and the loving and sorrowful contemplation, with a realistic and moving sense. In Byzantium, and in the representations of Byzantine influence, the figure of Christ rests on the slab of anointing, where his corpse was perfumed and prepared to receive burial, which later in Italian art will become a sepulcher. This scene does not appear in the Gospels, but finds its origin in mystical literature and religious texts of piety, as well as in those of the confraternities of flagellants.
Anton Van Dyck began his training with Van Balen, a Romanist painter, in 1609. In 1615-16 he worked with Jordaens, and between 1617 and 1620 with Rubens, who said that he was his best pupil. In 1620 he visited England for the first time, in the service of James I. In London he enjoyed greater freedom and left aside religious painting to devote himself fully to portraiture. Between 1621 and 1627 he completed his training with a trip to Italy, where he was impressed by Bolognese painting and the works of Titian, and here he achieved his mature, refined and elegant style, as well as establishing his own type of portrait, which became a model for Western painting. In 1629 he was again in London, this time working for King Charles I, who admired Titian's work and saw in Van Dyck his heir. Thus, he dismissed all his painters, having found in Van Dyck the court painter he had wanted for years. In 1640, on the death of Rubens, the painter returned to Antwerp to finish the works he had left unfinished. The following year he moved to Paris, and returned to London for health reasons, dying shortly thereafter at his home in the English capital. Anton Van Dyck is represented in major museums around the world: the Louvre, the Prado, the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, the National Gallery and the British Museum in London, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Metropolitan in New York.