brought together 58 works by the Flemish painter | Artribune

Pre-sales for the great spring exhibition produced and organized in Doge’s Palace they are already open. Thus Genoa welcomes one of the artists who contributed to making it the capital of art admired throughout Europe between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the rooms of the Doge’s Apartment, from March 20 to July 19, 2026the project dedicated to Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1644) – the most ambitious of the last decades, after the international exhibitions of the Nineties – will propose a portrait of the Flemish artist who goes beyond his talent for painting, capturing his diplomatic intelligence and ability to adapt to different social contexts, providing innovative solutions that made him one of the most loved artists in the European courts.

Antoon Van Dyck: a painter traveling around Europe

Van Dyck the European. The journey of a genius from Antwerp to Genoa and Londonthe care of Anna Orlando and Katlijne Van der Stigelentells all this by bringing together, exceptionally, 58 works by the painter, the result of authoritative loans, arriving from the Louvre and the Prado, from the Tyssen and the National Gallery in London, but also from the main Italian museums, from the Uffizi Gallery to the Pinacoteca di Brera, to the Sabauda Gallery. The exhibition will feature works from the Italian period – between 1621 and 1627 – in which Genoa played a central role, but also numerous paintings executed at different moments of the painter’s career, in Flanders, and in London, where he was called to work for King Charles I of England. The itinerary, however, will not proceed according to a chronological layout, favoring instead thematic sections (10 in total) linked to the choice of subjects, Van Dyck’s stylistic evolutions, and his ability to intercept the tastes of the time.

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The Palazzo Ducale exhibition on Van Dyck. The works

There will be large canvases, and portraits – Van Dyck was one of the most famous portraitists of his time (and of all times) – but also sacred works, such as the great Mystical wedding of Saint Catherine coming from the Prado in Madrid or the Saint Sebastian from the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, or the unpublished one Behold the Manfrom a private European collection. From Rapallo, where it is normally visible on the altar of the small church of San Michele di Pagana, will arrive the only public altarpiece that Van Dyck created for Liguria: a monumental Crucifixion.
To open the path, however, was chosen first self-portrait that is known of the painter, painted when Van Dyck was a boy, around fifteen years old (on loan from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna). But each work on display will help reveal Van Dyck’s artistic quality, from Portrait of Charles V on horseback ai Three children Giustiniani Longoal Portrait of the Palatine Princesallo Study for the figure of Saint Jerome.

Van Dyck in Genoa: the homage of the civic collections

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Genoese civic collections will propose a parallel path valorising the paintings of Van Dyck and his Nordic contemporaries present in the halls of the Strada Nuova Museums (Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco). The catalogpublished by Allemandi, will have an English edition by the Belgian publishing house Hannibal Books.