_Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See under last picture._
A copy, with some variations, of a large picture by Rubens now at
Vienna. The subject is that described by Gibbon (ch. xxvii.). The
Emperor Theodosius, for a massacre of the inhabitants of Thessalonica,
was excommunicated by Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan.
The emperor was deeply affected by his own reproaches, and
by those of his spiritual father; and, after he had bewailed
the mischievous and irreparable consequences of his own rash
fury, he proceeded, in the accustomed manner, to perform his
devotions in the great church of Milan. He was stayed in the
porch by the Archbishop; who, in the tone and language of an
ambassador of heaven, declared to his sovereign that private
contrition was not sufficient to atone for a public fault, or
to appease the justice of an offended Deity. Theodosius humbly
represented that if he had contracted the guilt of homicide,
David, the man after God's own heart, had been guilty not
only of murder, but of adultery. "You have imitated David in
his crime, imitate then his repentance," was the reply of the
undaunted Ambrose.
Observe as an instance of picturesque ornament properly introduced
in subordination to the figure subject, the robes of St. Ambrose.
"Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Van Dyck would be very sorry
to part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry,
observe, exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should
not _we_ also be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest in that
picture of the National Gallery? But I think Van Dyck would not have
liked, on the other hand, the vest without the bishop. And I much doubt
if Titian or Veronese would have enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and
making studies of dresses upon the counters" (_Stones of Venice_, vol.
i. ch. xx. § 13).