FOLLOWER OF SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK

The present work derives from van Dyck's three-quarter-length depiction of Paris in the Wallace Collection, London. As Jo Hedley notes (J. Hedley, in Van Dyck at the Wallace Collection, exhibition catalogue, London, 1999, pp. 100-102), this famous painting has been seen erroneously as a portrait of the artist and was disseminated as such through an 1807 engraving after it by Luigi Schiavonetti. In the present picture, which is reduced to bust-length, the subject has been transformed from Paris to Saint John the Baptist, with the latter's animal pelt and staff replacing the silken drapery and shepherd's crook of the Greek hero.

A nearly identical painting on a slightly smaller scale sold in these Rooms, 29 May 2001, lot 100.