The Apostle Judas Thaddeus

This head of the apostle Jude Thaddeus belongs to a set of 13 half-length panels, Christ and the 12 apostles, that van Dyck painted in Antwerp around 1619 to 1621. Scholars call it the Böhler series, after the Munich dealer who owned it early in the 20th century, and the set has long since been split up. Only two of the panels are in Vienna. Before Munich the series had a long Italian life. In the early 18th century it was in the Brignole collection at the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, the city where van Dyck himself would spend much of the 1620s painting its leading families. From there it passed to the Serra family in Genoa and then to princes in Naples. Van Dyck was working alongside Rubens when he painted it, and the museum notes that he took over Rubens's focused light and strong shadow and pushed the expression of feeling further. This panel was acquired in 1931.