Daniel van den Dyck

Daniel van den Dyck, known in Italy as Daniel Vandich (baptized on 3 December 1614, Antwerp – 1663, Mantua) was a Flemish painter, printmaker, architect and engineer. After training in Antwerp he left for Italy were he first worked in Venice and later became a court painter in Mantua. He was a versatile artist who created mythological and religious scenes, as well as portraits and flower-pieces.

Very little is known about the early life of Daniel van den Dyck. He was born in Antwerp as the son of Jan van den Dyck and Cornelia Kerstboom. He was baptized in Antwerp Cathedral on 3 December 1614. He was registered as a pupil of Peter Verhaeght in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in the guild year 1631-1632. He was registered as a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in the guild year 1633-1634. It is assumed that shortly after becoming a master he left Antwerp as he was not involved in any of the large commissions on which Antwerp painters worked in the middle of the 1630s such as the decorations for the Joyous Entry into Antwerp of the new governor of the Habsburg Netherlands Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand and the decorations for the hunting pavilion Torre de la Parada of the Spanish king Philip IV near Madrid.

The artist passed first through Bergamo were he created a few signed and dated portraits. He was in Venice likely from 1634 onwards. Here he married Lucrezia Renieri, the eldest daughter of Nicolas Régnier, a Flemish painter active in Venice who was herself a painter. The couple had three sons. His father-in-law had been active in Venice since 1626 not only as a painter but also as an art dealer and art collector. Clorinda, the younger sister of van den Dyck's wife was married to the prominent Italian painter Pietro della Vecchia (1605-1678). These family ties meant that van den Dyck could rely on a network of Flemish and Italian artists in Venice. This allowed him to gain many commissions for religious paintings in churches as well as for portraits. He painted wall decorations in the Palazzo Pesaro in Preganziol together with his brother-in-law della Vecchia and their respective spouses.

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