Self-Portrait

For most of its life this panel was a Rubens. It is small, a little larger than a sheet of writing paper, and when the Rubenshuis bought it at auction in New York in 1995 it came as a portrait of the young van Dyck made by his teacher.

The sitter turns his head over his shoulder and looks straight out, which is a van Dyck habit more than a Rubens one. Researchers from the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven went over the panel with MA-XRF, an imaging method that maps the chemical elements in the paint and so reveals the order the layers went on. The hat was an afterthought. The face beneath it had started rounder, and the collar and cloak began a good deal plainer.

What settled the question was the wing behind his shoulder, in the dark at the right edge. It is close to the same wing van Dyck painted a few years afterwards in his Daedalus and Icarus, the picture in which he gave Icarus his own face. He was about 17 when he painted this one.