evident that the personality of Rubens, and his
connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost
as much as did his art. How much he owed to Rubens, and how much Rubens
owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. He had been
several years with Van Balen before he entered the studio of Rubens,
when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. Here he not
only had the practical task of painting Rubens's compositions for him,
in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying
the works of Titian and other of the great Italian masters in Rubens's
famous collection. If the hand of Van Dyck is traceable in some of the
pictures of Rubens at this period, so the spirit of Rubens is very
obvious in those of Van Dyck. The chief thing to be remembered is that
in these early days he was not painting portraits. His earliest works,
in which the influence of Titian is perceptible as well as that of
Rubens, are the _Christ bearing the Cross_, in S. Paul's at Antwerp,
painted in 1618; the _S. Sebastian_ at Munich, and the _Christ Mocked_,
at Berlin. The familiar portrait of _Cornelius van der Geest_ in the
National Gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before 1620.
Again, on his first visit to Genoa, in 1621, on the advice of Rubens,
his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some
years later, but to rival Rubens in the composition of great historical
pieces. It was not until 1627, when he left behind him in Genoa the
superb series of Balbi, Brignole-Sala, Cattaneo, and Lomellini
portraits, and returned to Antwerp to undertake those such as the _Le
Roys_ at Hertford House, or the _Beatrice de Cusance_ at Windsor, that
he had really become a portrait painter. Even then, he was still
determined not to yield to Rubens at Antwerp, and painted, amongst other
subjects, the _Rinaldo and Armida_ for Charles I. It was only at the
solicitation of George Geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he
consented at length, in 1632, to come to England; and it was only the
welcome afforded to him by Charles that induced him to settle here.

Two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating
Charles to be specially indulgent to Van Dyck--an indulgence of which
the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of
the martyr--first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in
his service, and second, that Velasquez, who