Two Studies of a Man’s Head

Van Dyck was an important portrait painter of the second quarter of the seventeenth century. A talent of his was to give particular character to his portraits. He spent some time in England and consequently exercised considerable influence on English portrait painting from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Van Dyck made this oil sketch during his first Antwerp period, probably around 1618. It is the study for a man’s head that acted as a model for various depictions of St. Jerome.