"Anthony Van Dyck was born in Antwerp in 1599. On the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth Robin Blake provides the fullest narrative of Van Dyck's life and personality ever to appear in English. This new biography re-evaluates the man not only as a remarkably individual portraitist, but as a fully-rounded baroque artist of memorable power." "This is an account of the public and private life of an unusually driven genius. The death of his mother Maria, when he was seven, led to troubling attacks of melancholy throughout Van Dyck's life, which he held at bay by keeping up a punishing work-rate. He knew most of the great men and women of his day, but his story is also enlivened by glimpses of lesser figures such as the anonymous model who posed so alluringly for him in the late 1620s, his friend the mysterious secret agent the Abbe Scaglia, the eccentric adventurer and philosopher Sir Kenelm Digby, the jealous English courtesan Margaret Lemon and Van Dyck's tragic young wife Mary Ruthven, who gave birth to their daughter just a week before Van Dyck himself died."--BOOK JACKET.