Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641). Robert Rich (1587–1658), Second Earl of Warwick (detail), ca. 1632–35. Oil on canvas, 81 7/8 x 50 3/8 in. (208 x 128 cm), with added strip of 2 1/8 in. (5.4 cm) at top. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.26)
There's great attitude and affectation in how he's staging each of these portraits. And it's like theater…
My name is Paul Tazewell and I am a costume designer.
For me, designing costumes gives me an opportunity to live vicariously through different types of characters. I make choices to support the character the first time that you see them step on stage, before they speak a word, and that's exactly what's happening here.
Van Dyck is so good that he's able to step into that person and figure out how to best show completely who they are because of the facility with rendering the fabric, with rendering the clothing itself, and the people that are wearing the clothing, all of the detail—it's all indicated. For this time in history clothing was significantly more feminized than we're used to today. It's a completely different way of showing power. I do wonder: how was the clothing chosen for each of these portraits, what his input was and then what the sitters chose themselves? You know, it can't be an afterthought. And how has he made them more beautiful? Has he gotten rid of blemishes and, you know, has he made it more enticing? And you can see in his different self-portraits the way that he dressed himself in the style of the aristocracy he was painting.
He envisioned this very elegant lifestyle with pompoms on shoes and knee-high hosiery and the amount of fabric that went into these garments. When you're looking at this painting and you look at the way that the light plays with the black and the charcoal gray and the lighter gray and the silver, he's creating the way light reflects off of metallic and he's creating how light reflects off of black, and how it crunches and creates a sculpture of its own.
If you compare what he's dressing himself in to what the other figures are dressed in, it's actually sexy. You see a lot of flesh—even the sleeve is open. You know, he's allowing you to see a lot of himself, his humanness, but in a very sexualized way.
I think that it is about character. There's great attitude and affectation in how he's staging each of these portraits. And it's like theater, and I think that it's theater that I gravitate to.
