Portrait of Jan Wildens

The framed portrait shows the Flemish painter Jan Wildens in half profile. His brown eyes gaze at the viewer. A strand of his brown hair is combed forward onto his already somewhat sparse forehead. Wildens wears a goatee. His cloak is black with a white lace collar. Wildens lived and worked for the most part in his home city of Antwerp. He is particularly well known for his collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens, in whose workshop Wildens worked from 1616, mainly as a landscape painter. The painter of the portrait is Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), who is likewise a colleague and student of Rubens. Van Dyck painted several portraits of his colleagues. A master in the Guild of St. Luke at the early age of 19, he was summoned by Charles I of England in 1632 to become a court painter. There are three versions of the painting, whereby the portrait presumed to be the original, which was previously exhibited in Vienna, disappeared around 1940. A further version can be found in Kassel.