Old Head Flemish School 17th Century

Painting oil on panel depicting a strong and distinctive old man's head with dimensions of 36 x 28 cm without frame and 68 x 60 with frame coeval Flemish school of the second half of the 17th century. by Flemish painter Daniel Van den Dick ( Antwerp 1610 - Mantua 1670 ).

In this depiction of this character portrayed for the particularity and depth of the face, quickly sketched with an accentuated formal conciseness and with a squarish physiognomy of the face, illuminated by an artificial light source that directly invests the protagonist, one can see a revisitation of a seventeenth-century figurative culture with a really important and remarkably tasteful aesthetic and interpretative 'angle.
Moreover, the painting in such an abbreviated manner, seemingly almost hurried, but instead undergirded by a pressing rhythm is accentuated by a more thoughtful interpretive effort. Focusing then on the truly peculiar typologies both formal and physiognomic, combined with the analysis of the contrasting chromatic fabric traversed by squillant luministic flickers.

The compositional scheme of this work faithfully reflects the precepts of the time with an 'almost frontal setting of the figure and with the light conceived in the strictest Caravaggesque tradition, with a light source coming from the left, which makes the noble head stand out against a dark background, shaded on the right in a lighter halo; here we can easily see the artist's inclination and desire to capture in the portrait the character of the character and his attention to an emotional and sentimental rendering of the image through a painting, which exudes a deep humanity and great moral strength, without ever reaching a decorative formalism, endowed with both great naturalism and realism and a strong religious spirit and an intimate and sorrowful participation in a humanity marked by age and suffering.