Jan Caspar Gevaerts (1593-1666). Jurist, historian and philologist

The man in this portrait is Jan Gaspar Gevaerts, known in Latin as Gevartius, and for more than 40 years he was the town clerk of Antwerp. He was also one of the finest classical scholars of his day and a close friend of Peter Paul Rubens. When the young governor Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand made his ceremonial entry into Antwerp in 1635, Rubens designed the great triumphal arches, and it was Gevartius who wrote the learned Latin texts and mottoes that covered them. The book he holds here points to that life of study. The portrait itself is a faithful old copy after one that Anthony van Dyck painted from life, which still hangs in Antwerp. Van Dyck knew this circle well, and his original caught Gevartius as his friends would have seen him at his desk.