Magistrat von Brüssel

In 1634 Van Dyck, by then court painter to Charles the First of England, took a break from London and went back to the Low Countries to paint the seven magistrates of Brussels gathered in council around a figure of Justice. That finished group portrait no longer exists. It burned in 1695, when a French bombardment set much of central Brussels on fire. What you are looking at is one of the few things that survived, Van Dyck's quick oil sketch for it, the heads roughed in and the paint still loose. This panel then had an odd second life. It was bought for 400 pounds in a Cheshire antiques shop, brought onto a television programme in England, and only then cleaned of later overpaint and recognised as the real thing.