Portrait of Peeter Stevens

Van Dyck came home to Antwerp in September 1627 after some six years in Italy, and the cloth merchant Peeter Stevens, a keen art lover, wasted no time in sitting for him. The Mauritshuis links the ease of the result to sprezzatura, the Italian ideal of looking effortless. The portrait carries its own paperwork. On the base of the column, low on the left, the painter wrote ÆT. SUA 37, Latin for “aged 37”, with the year 1627 and his signature. Higher up, the family coat of arms hangs from a lion’s-head ring on the wall. Stevens stands almost square to us, wrapped in black above a crisp pleated collar. The one bright passage is his left hand, in a pale leather glove whose wide cuff is embroidered in gold, held out in a gesture the museum can only call distinguished.