Looking at Van Dyck's Scipio in its Contexts

Abstract

Van Dyck's Continence of Scipio, painted 1620‐21 in London for the Marquis of Buckingham, introduces mythological and theatrical elements into its historical narrative, It includes an antique frieze of Medusa heads, as one of a repertory of animated objects which ironically underscore the relationships among the figures. This points up the theme of looking in the original story from Livy, and takes account of the unsettling revisions of that story and its hero both in later antiquity and the early modern period, from Florus to Petrarch and on to Castiglione. The double structure of history and comic parody specifically responds to the theatrical culture of the English court.