_Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See_ 49.
An interesting sketch as illustrating Van Dyck's affection for the
horse. "In painting, I find that no real interest is taken in the
horse until Van Dyck's time, he and Rubens doing more for it than
all previous painters put together. Rubens was a good rider, and
rode nearly every day, as, I doubt not, Van Dyck also. The horse has
never, I think, been painted worthily again, since he died" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 22).
The particular choice of subject in this sketch shows further in its
literary connection a lover of the horse. The subject, as we know
from the words _equi Achillis_ on a scroll in the left corner of the
picture, is the horses of Achilles, said for their swiftness to be the
sons of the wind Zephyrus: in the upper part of the picture is a sketch
of a zephyr's head. "The gentleness of chivalry, properly so called,
depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier
animal-life, ... taught most perfectly by Homer in the fable of the
horses of Achilles. There is, perhaps, in all the _Iliad_ nothing more
deep in significance--there is nothing in all literature more perfect
in human tenderness, and honour for the mystery of inferior life,
than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses at the
death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them by the greatest of the
gods"[98] (_Fors Clavigera_, 1871, ix. 13).