The Resurrection

The date usually attached to this picture is 1632, the year van Dyck settled in London. The catalogue of his paintings puts it a step earlier, among the works of his second Antwerp period, the run between 1627 and 1632, and the dating most often printed is about 1631 to 1632. It sits on the seam, and the weight of opinion leaves it in Antwerp.

The subject comes from Matthew, where an earthquake and an angel open the tomb and the guards fall down like dead men. Van Dyck hands the lower half of the canvas to those soldiers and then divides them. The two at the left have woken and are throwing their arms up; the others lie along a diagonal, still asleep, one of them slumped against a companion's shoulder. Christ rises above them in a white cloth, one arm raised and a staff in the other hand. The canvas is a little over a metre tall, and it has been at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford since 1964.