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The Look of Van Dyck: The Self-Portrait with a Sunflower and the Vision of the Painter book cover

1st Edition

The Look of Van Dyck The Self-Portrait with a Sunflower and the Vision of the Painter

By John Peacock Copyright 2006
324 Pages
by Routledge

324 Pages
by Routledge

Based on a close study of Van Dyck's Self-portrait with a Sunflower, this book examines the picture's context in the symbolic discourses of the period and in the artist's oeuvre. The portrait is interpreted as a programmatic statement, made in the ambience of the Caroline court after Van Dyck's appointment as 'Principal Painter', of his view of the art of painting. This statement, formulated in... Read more
Contents: Introduction; Self-imaging, Pictura, and vision; Looking and seeing; Representing the sunflower in word and image; The sunflower becomes a symbol; The golden chain; The Portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby with a sunflower; The figure of the painter; Conclusion; Appendix: Kenelm Digby, heliotropism, and the powder of sympathy; Notes; Index.

Biography

John Peacock is Reader in English at the University of Southampton, UK.

’... a series of extraordinarily richly allusive chapters... The erudition is extraordinary... there is real insight to be found throughout the text... When Peacock scrutinises the Van Dyck self-portrait he is constantly stimulating and provocative... No one has mapped the image as closely as Peacock in his text and it will stand as the definitive account of van Dyck's Self-Portrait with Sunflower...’ The Art Book

’Peacock is an engaging and skillful guide... The Look of van Dyck alters and enriches an understanding of the work at its center. Countering a trend in academia for books with ever broader sweep, Peacock demonstrates the complex forms of thought that can be discerned in a sustained study of a single work of art.’ caa.reviews

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