Instytut Sztuki (Warschau) [Hrsg.]; Państwowy Instytut Sztuki (bis 1959) [Hrsg.]; Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki [Hrsg.]: Biuletyn Historii Sztuki (76.2014)

Jeździec polski Antoona Van Dycka - studium przedstawienia

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Anthony Van Dyck’s Polish Rider - Presentation Study

At the Staatsgalerie Neuen Schloss Schleissheim
visitors can see a painting featuring a young
horseman. It strikes with an expressive body of the
cavalryman, a proportionally built and dynamically
presented stallion, as well as a subdued palette
dominated by browns and golden ochres. The work
displays skilled and confident broad brush strokes.
The presented scene shows the rider above an
escarpment making a right turn after stopping the
canter, the latter suggested by the horse’s leg
arrangement, its dropping tail, and the main flowing
in the wind. The tip of the slope steeply flows down
towards the coast of low tide typical of an evening
with a smooth sea. The land below the hill, formed
by dunes, is grown with fine grass and clusters of
leafy bushes. The time of the day is shown in the
glow in the sky with the setting sun remaining
beyond the right edge of the painting, making the
right side of the rider and the animal gleam. The
sun’s position implies long and clear-cut horizontal
shadows.
The notice on the work’s frame reading: ‘4816
Anthonis van Dyck 1599-1641 Der Polnische
Kasak’ bears no question mark following the
master’s name, however the piece has not been
recorded in the most recent compendium of the
Flemish master’s complete oeuvre (Susan J.
BARNES, Nora DE POORTER, Oliver MILLAR,
Horst VEY, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the
Paintings, New Haven and London, 2004). The
Bavarian catalogue of the paintings displayed
at Schleissheim {Staatsgalerie Schleissheim:
Verzeichnis der Gemalde, hg. v. Bayerische Staats-
gemaldesammlungen (Johan Georg Prinz von
Hohenzollern Redaktion), Miinchen 1980, p. 23)
informs that the work comes from a gallery in
Dusseldorf. The reproduction features the following
inscription: ‘ANTHONIS VAN DYCK (F) / Pol-
nischer Kosak’, with ‘F’ not standing for the
adjective ‘Falsch’, meaning an erroneous, incorrect,
or false attribution, but for the painter’s nationality:
‘Flame’.
The horseman clearly is not a Polish Cossack,
but a Polish rider; what is more, a descendant of a
wealthy social group, though presented in a daily,
almost field costume. His dress differs from the attire
of West European cavalrymen, displaying elements
typical of the East European cultural circles of the
1st half of the 17th century.
The rider is wearing a traditional garment of
Polish noblemen, zupan, with long sleeves to the

wrists and a semi flare above the hand. Since the
figure is shown from the back, the zupan cannot be
more precisely characterized on the grounds of
buttons, loops, and braiding. It seems, however, to
have been made of light smooth fabric, most likely
woollen. With broadened shoulders, it has sleeves
taken in along the forearm. The cut of the sleeves
and collar suggest the late 1630s or even the
following decade. The relatively low collarband,
came into vogue in around 1640. The chosen
golden-cinnamon colour, which was to dominate in
the latter haff of the 17th century, may testify to the
good taste of the emerging fashion. The belt of thin
fabric, possibly silk, golden and light-yellow, twisted
and bound on the right side, harmonizes with the
zupan. The rider is wearing a soft crimson hat
resembling a low calpack, lined with light-brown fur,
possibly of red marten (although fox or otter are also
possible), with a slit at the back (as well as at the
front, which is not visible), rolled up above the ears,
with a tail of long black feathers set in gold. The
length of the feathers (ca. 40 cm) and their width
show that they cannot come from Egretta heron’s
head plumage. Such feathers, being white, would
need to be additionally dyed. They are most likely
primaries from the wings of a crane, and not from
the plume above the tail covert. The rider’s boots
made of yellow soft saffian leather, knee-high, with
a thin sole and a low heel, as well as impeccably
modelled toes, are elegant, featuring no spurs. The
hat is typically Polish, not Cossack. The rider is of
noble descent, this testified by the hat’s precious
ornament, high-quality boots, and his excellent
riding skills.
The well-built and groomed horse, of shining and
brushed coat, is chestnut. Its legs’ motions are
perfectly rendered to show the moment of the change
of the movement’s speed and direction. Tense
ligaments around the hock, tautened shank and croup
muscles, and the roundness at the hip bone are
prominent. The right foreleg of the horse is extended
and braced against the ground, the left one lifted high.
Only the right hind leg, in the cannon section, seems a
little deformed, of vaguely rendered fetlock and hoof,
the latter as if not fully resting on the ground. This is
unlikely the animal’s anatomy feature, but more
probably renders perspective foreshortening as seen
in real life, and not being a pose studied from the
stallion’s three-beat movement.
He is riding bareback, with no saddle, stirrups,
or harness, only with a short dark-brown horse