e seventeenth century who
made animals their chief study. Theretofore it had been rare to
introduce them into pictures, except as symbols, like the lion of St.
Jerome, or where the story implied them; or in allegorical pictures,
such as the 'Golden Age.' But at this later time animals had their
share in the increased interest that was taken in the things of daily
life, and they were painted for their handsome sakes, as Landseer
painted them in England fifty years ago.

Thus the seventeenth century in Holland shows an enlargement in the
scope of subjects for painting. Devotional pictures were becoming rare,
but illustrations, sacred and secular, portraits, groups, interiors,
and landscapes, were produced in great numbers. Dutch painters
outnumbered those of Flanders, but among the latter were at least two
of the highest eminence, Rubens and Van Dyck, and to these we will
next direct our attention.

CHAPTER XI

VAN DYCK

The great painter Rubens lived at Antwerp, a town about as near to
Amsterdam as Dover is to London. Yet despite the proximity of Flanders
and Holland, their religion, politics, social life, and art were very
different in the seventeenth century, as we have already seen.

Rubens was a painter of the prosperous and ruling classes. He was
employed by his own sovereign, by the King of Spain, by Marie de Medicis,
Queen of France, and by Charles I. of England. His remarkable social
and intellectual gifts caused him to be employed also as an ambassador,
and he was sent on a diplomatic errand to Spain; but even then his
leisure hours were occupied in copying the fine Titians in the King's
palace.

One day he was noticed by a Spanish noble, who said to him, 'Does my
Lord occupy his spare time in painting?' 'No,' said Rubens; 'the
painter sometimes amuses himself with diplomacy.'

In his life as in his art he was exuberant. An absurd anecdote of the
time is good enough to show that. Some people, who went to visit him
in his studio at Antwerp, wrote afterwards that they found him hard
at work at a picture, whilst at the same time he was dictating a letter,
and some one else was reading aloud a Latin work. When the visitors
arrived he answered all their questions without leaving off any of
those three occupations! We must not all hope to match Rubens.

Rubens's great ceremonial paintings, containing numerous figures and
commemorating historical scenes in honour of his Royal patrons, were
executed