Contextualizing Anthony van Dyck\u27s Iconography within the Emerging Traditions of Portraiture and Artists\u27 Biography in the Early Modern Period

The Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck extended his preoccupation with portraiture into the printed medium by designing a body of portrait prints, posthumously compiled into a book entitled, the Iconography. This suite of images, organized and designed by Van Dyck and printed by workshop assistants between 1632 and 1644, is comprised of engraved and etched half-length portraits of contemporary European men and women of various professions and backgrounds, including artists, scholars, diplomats, and religious leaders. This thesis examines the artistic and literary context for Van Dyck’s Iconography, with a focus on the changing social and intellectual status of artists in northern Europe during the seventeenth century. It seeks to provide the scholarship on the Iconography with an understanding of how the portraits function as a collective group that enhanced the prestige of artists in the seventeenth century