Van Dyck's Genoese Nobles - (Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual Histor) by John Peacock (Hardcover)

About the Book

A study of two major aristocratic portraits which Van Dyck painted during his residence in Genoa in the 1620s, using the meanings specific to each image and the contrasts between them to expound the distinctive and shifting ideas about nobility and its prerogatives entertained by the Genoese patriciate.

Book Synopsis

The aristocratic portraits painted by Van Dyck in the Republic of Genoa during the 1620s have become famous as definitively charismatic images of a ruling elite, the Genoese nobility being constitutionally defined as the governing class of the state. From the earliest written accounts of them a generic, collective appeal has been ascribed to these prepotently glamorous images, glossing over the specific meanings which any individual image might express. This study of two principal portraits uses their contrasting significances to expound the tension between established and shifting ideas of nobility which informed the thinking and behaviour of the Genoese patriciate, and of which Van Dyck shows perceptive awareness.

About the Author

John Peacock BLitt (Oxford) was Reader in English at Southampton University UK where he is now Fellow Emeritus. He is the author of The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones. The European Context (Cambridge, 1995) and most recently of Picturing Courtiers and Nobles from Castiglione to Van Dyck (Routledge, 2021).