The Apostle Simon

In his late teens and early twenties Anthony van Dyck painted the series of the twelve Apostles that established him as Rubens’s most gifted follower in Antwerp: the panels, executed about 1618, show the saintly figures in half-length against a plain ground, each with his attribute, handled with a refinement of touch and a cool elegance already distinct from the master’s bolder manner. The set was dispersed in the eighteenth century, and its panels are now divided among European and American collections; this Apostle Simon, one of the survivors, preserves the youthful cycle’s combination of Rubensian energy and the silkier, more aristocratic paint that would carry van Dyck to the courts of Genoa and London. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.