Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Peeter Stevens (c.1590-1668), 1627 In 1627, Antwerp cloth merchant Peeter Stevens had himself portrayed by Anthony van Dyck. When Stevens married a year later, he commissioned Van Dyck to paint his wife Anna as well. Anna came on the left, so that Steevens would not have his back to her. But actually, the rules of the wedding portrait prescribed that the man hung on the left and the woman on the right. Van Dyck was the second Flemish portraitist of his time after Rubens. He was loved for making his patrons just a little more beautiful and elegant than they really were.
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