Virgin and Child
ca. 1620
Medium
Oil on wood
Dimensions
25 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (64.1 x 49.5 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Fletcher Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.33.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the early Baroque masterpiece *Virgin and Child* (ca. 1620), Anthony van Dyck captures a deeply intimate moment between the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ. Painted in oil on wood—a favored medium for portable devotional panels—this compact work (25¼ × 19½ in.) glows with the artist's signature luminosity and tender realism. The tags hint at a nursing Madonna, a motif emphasizing Mary's humanity and maternal love, which resonated in Counter-Reformation Europe as a way to draw worshippers closer to the divine. Van Dyck, a prodigious Flemish painter and protégé of Peter Paul Rubens, was in...
About the Artist
Anthony van Dyck · 1599–1641
Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was a Flemish Baroque artist who revolutionized portrait painting and became the most influential court painter in 17th-century England. Born in Antwerp as the seventh of twelve children to a prosperous silk merchant, van Dyck displayed extraordinary artistic talent from childhood. He trained under Hendrick van Balen before joining Peter Paul Rubens's workshop as a...