| Description | Henry Percy was confined to the Tower of London for 16 years as a suspected conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot. The books that he kept in the Tower, which included mathematical treatises and books on the occult, together with his scientific experiments, earned him the title 'The Wizard Earl'. This is probably an English copy after the original painting in Petworth House, Sussex, by van Dyck (1599-1641). However, this picture is cropped and bears a closer resemblance to another version Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (Fielding Sale, Christie's, 1 July 1938). Van Dyck was Flemish and trained in Rubens' studio, becoming his leading assistant. He was already famous, mostly as a portrait painter, in the Southern Netherlands and Italy before 1620 when he first arrived in England and where he spent the last part of his career before dying young. As early as 1652 a source notes that van Dyck would have based his portrait of Percy on an earlier portrait. He almost certainly never met Percy, who died only a few months before van Dyck arrived in England. |
