s
but a lad of seventeen years, he was admitted as a master into the
painters' guild of St Luke. Two years later, he was still working with
Rubens, who, seeing his lameness of invention, counselled him to abide
by portrait painting, and to visit Italy. A year later, in 1621, when
Van Dyck was twenty years of age, he came to London, already becoming a
resort of Flemish painters, and lodging with a countryman of his own,
worked for a short time in the service of James I.

On Van Dyck's return to Flanders, and on the death of his father, he was
able to take Rubens' advice, and in 1623, when Van Dyck was still only
twenty-two years of age, he set out for Venice, the Rome of the Flemish
painters. Before quitting Antwerp, Van Dyck, in proof of the friendship
which existed between the painters, presented Rubens with several of the
former's pictures, among them his famous portrait of 'Rubens' wife.' As
a pendant to this generosity, when Van Dyck came back to Antwerp, and
complained to Rubens that he--Van Dyck--could not live on the profits of
his painting, Rubens went next day and bought every picture of Van
Dyck's which was for sale.

Van Dyck spent five years in Italy, visiting Venice, Florence, Rome, and
Palermo, but residing principally at Genoa. In Italy, he began to
indulge in his love of splendid extravagance, and in the fastidious
fickleness which belonged to the evil side of his character. At Rome he
was called 'the cavalier painter,' yet his first complaint on his return
to Antwerp was, that he could not live on the profits of his painting!
He avoided the society of his homelier countrymen.

At Palermo, Van Dyck knew, and according to some accounts, painted the
portrait of Sophonisba Anguisciola, who claimed to be the most eminent
portrait painter among women. She was then about ninety years of age,
and blind, but she still delighted in having in her house a kind of
academy of painting, to which all the painters visiting Palermo
resorted. Van Dyck asserted that he owed more to her conversation than
to the teaching of all the schools. A book of his sketches, which was
recovered, showed many drawings 'after Sophonisba Anguisciola.' She is
said to have been born at Cremona, was invited at the age of twenty-six
by Philip II, to Spain, and was presented by him with a Spanish don for
a husband, and a pension of a thousand crowns a-year from the customs of
Palermo.

The plague drove Van Dyck from Italy back to Flanders,