EXTENSIONS FOR PUBLIC or private art collections have become vehicles for architectural innovation in recent years. Yet in this crowded field the Kunstmuseum Basel, as it is now named, has created a new building which is of outstanding interest. The new building is contemporary, yet blends in; it asserts a powerful physical presence while also demonstrating awareness of history.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK’s Self-portrait from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (cat. no.12; Fig.71), was the first painting that one encountered in Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture at the Frick Collection, New York (to 5th June)1 It is not difficult to figure out why. What other painter ever posed with such graceful nonchalance, or sprezzatura, with hands arranged ‘just-so’, their easy equilibrium playing off against the master’s direct and penetrating gaze. The broken brushstrokes, the gentle curls of reddish-brown hair falling gracefully over his forehead and the voluminous black robe all create the sense of a living, breathing being. Through this painting we grasp the visual power that Van Dyck exerts, and understand why he is considered one of the greatest portrait painters who ever lived.

CHARLES DAVIS DIED in Munich on 26th October 2015. He was born in Burlington, North Carolina, on 19th October 1939 and in 1973 he received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; his dissertation was entitled ‘Studies in the Sculpture of Bartolomeo Ammannati’. He began his research in Florence in 1968, and from 1969 to 1971, with a Fellowship from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, continued his studies on Italian sculpture at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. This focus, and his research in Florence during these years, became the foundation upon which his later studies dedicated to Italian cinquecento sculpture, painting and architecture rest.