Anthony van Dyck, Head of a Young Woman, ca. 1620 Van Dyck’s insight into the young woman&rsqu
Anthony van Dyck, Head of a Young Woman, ca. 1620Van Dyck’s insight into the young woman’s personality is so acute and sympathetic, even affectionate, as to intimate a personal, even familial relation with the model. He had three sisters in holy orders and, according to Bellori, he portrayed one of them as Mary Magdalene in the Lamentation he painted for her convent church. The likeness between this woman’s face and his own in the first self-portrait is just sufficient to give plausibility to the conjecture that he portrayed one of his sisters in this study as well. -- source link