uccessors. The rooms were spacious, with high walls that could
well hold the large canvases of Van Dyck. Sometimes a special gallery
was built to contain the family portraits, and Van Dyck received a
commission to paint them all. Often, several copies of the same picture
were ordered at one time to be sent as presents to friends and relations.
Usually the artist painted but one himself; the rest were copies by
his assistants.

Van Dyck's portraits were designed to suit great houses. In a small
room, which a portrait by Holbein would have decorated nobly, a canvas
by Van Dyck would have been overpowering. In spite of the fact that
the expressions on the faces are often intimate and appealing,
domesticity is not the mark of his art. In Van Dyck's picture of our
'heir of fame,' the white linen, the yellow satin, and the armour please
us as befitting the lovely face. There is a glimmer of light on the
armour, but you see how different is Van Dyck's treatment of it from
Rembrandt's. Van Dyck painted it as an article of dress in due
subordination to the face, not as an opportunity for reflecting light
and becoming the most important thing in the picture.

We have seen how Rembrandt, Peter de Hoogh, Cuyp, Rubens, and Van Dyck
were all contemporaries, born within an area of ground smaller far
than England. Yet the range of their subjects was widely different,
and each painter gave his individuality full play. The desires of the
public were not stereotyped and fixed, as they had been when all alike
wanted their religious aspirations expressed in art. The patrons of
that epoch had various likings, as we have to-day, and the painter
developed along the lines most congenial to himself. Unless he could
make people like what he enjoyed painting, he could not make a living.
If they had no eyes to learn to see, he might remain unappreciated,
like Rembrandt, until long after his death. Yet Van Dyck's portraits
were popular. People could scarcely help enjoying an art that showed
them off to such advantage. Having found a style that suited him, he
adhered to it consistently, thenceforward making but few experiments.
This little picture before us is an admirable example of the gentle
poetic grace and refinement always recalled to the memory by the name
of Van Dyck. So long as men prize the aspect of distinction, which
he was the first Northern painter to express in paint, Van Dyck's
reputation will endure.

CHAPTER XII

VELASQUE