Man with a Ruff

Follower of Anthony van Dyck · 17th century

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

67.4 × 52.5 cm (26 1/2 × 20 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

"Man with a Ruff" carries the composed gravity that defines the best Flemish Baroque portraiture — an unknown sitter gazing steadily outward, his identity lost to time but his presence still immediate. The attribution to a follower of Anthony van Dyck places the work within the wider orbit of one of the seventeenth century's most celebrated portraitists. Van Dyck's circle was substantial: he trained in Antwerp under Rubens before becoming court painter to Charles I of England, and the artists who worked in his shadow absorbed his distinctive approach to rendering silk, skin, and shadow. This painter demonstrates that learning well, handling the crisp geometry of the ruff against the loose, atmospheric treatment of the face. The ruff itself — that elaborate starched collar — was falling from fashionable use by the 1630s and 1640s, making its appearance here a mark of either the sitter's conservative taste or an older date of execution, a small detail that rewards a closer look. Our hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas captures the tonal restraint and layered brushwork of the original, held in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.