e king and all Vandyck's friends were troubled by his state of health
and mind, and a marriage was brought about for him with the hope that he
would be a happier man. His wife was Maria Ruthven, a lovely Scotch girl
who held a high position among the attendants of the queen. Not long after
his marriage Vandyck took her to Flanders, where he enjoyed much the
honorable reception which he met with in revisiting the scenes of his
childhood and youth. But having learned that Louis XIII. was about to
adorn a large gallery in the Louvre, Vandyck hastened to Paris hoping to
obtain the commission. He was too late--the work had been given to
Poussin, and Vandyck returned to London greatly disheartened.

While at Antwerp he had received much attention, as, indeed, had been the
case before, for in 1634 he had been elected Dean of the Confraternity of
St. Luke and a great feast was held in his honor. When he came now to
London the social atmosphere was full of sadness. The political troubles,
which were finally so terrible in England, had already become alarming.
In a few months the Earl of Strafford was executed, and Vandyck saw the
royal family, to whom he was so much attached, surrounded with danger and
at last separated.

His physical health was already delicate, and his sorrows brought on a
disease from which he soon died. He continued to work until the very last
days of his life. Eight days before his death his daughter was born; she
was named Justiniana, and when she grew up married an English baronet, Sir
John Stepney.

A short time before Vandyck died the king came from the North to London,
and though he was overburdened with his own cares and griefs he found time
to sorrow for the condition of his friend and artist. He offered his
physician three hundred pounds if he would save the life of Sir Anthony;
but nothing availed to baffle his disease, and he died December 9, 1641.
Two days later he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. It is said that many
nobles and artists attended his funeral, which was conducted with
impressive ceremony. The fire which destroyed St. Paul's made it
impossible to say exactly where Vandyck was laid, but his coffin-plate was
found at the time of the burial of Benjamin West.

There were no artists of importance after the time of Rubens and his
followers whom we call Flemish artists. There were good painters,
certainly, belonging to the schools of Flanders; but these schools had
reached their high