Portrait of the painter Theodor Rombouts

Theodoor Rombouts had spent nine years in Rome, from 1616 to 1625, and came home to Antwerp as one of the leading followers of Caravaggio in Flanders, painting card players, musicians and religious scenes in hard light that cuts the figures out of deep shadow. By the time van Dyck painted him, around 1631 or 1632, Rombouts had married, had a small daughter, and had served from 1628 to 1630 as dean of the guild of Saint Luke, the city's painters' guild. Van Dyck shows a man entirely at ease. Rombouts leans over the back of his chair and turns towards us, a pose the Alte Pinakothek reads as plain self-assurance. The oak panel has a partner of almost exactly the same size, the portrait of his wife Anna van Thielen with their little girl. The two hang in the same room in Munich, in matching 18th-century frames designed by the Bavarian court architect Joseph Effner.