It was the habit of most Northern artists at that time to make a
journey in Italy. The renown of the works created during the preceding
two centuries by the Italian Renaissance had spread all over Europe,
and no young artist considered his education complete without having
spent a few years in studying them. Moreover, they found that patrons
patronised them better if they had been through this Italian training.
These ideas were rather dictated by the prevailing fashion than by any
solid good to be derived by the artist who underwent it. We have
innumerable examples of Dutchmen and Flemings whose natural genius
became perverted upon Italian soil. Nicholas Berchem and Karl Dujardin
were striking examples of the sad results which frequently accrued from
thus transplanting themselves into a country with which their
temperament had nothing in common. It is probable that had Karl
Dujardin remained in Holland, the world would have been enriched by a
landscape painter of the first order, for he had gifts far above even
the average painter of his time. But immediately on reaching Italy he
succumbed to the influences surrounding him, and endeavoured to get rid
as far as possible of his early training, and to see things and render
them in the Italian way. The result was, that whilst he never threw
off the Dutch character of his scenes and figures, he enveloped them
with a conventional atmosphere as monotonous as it is untrue.
We have already seen the results the Italian journey had upon Rubens.
There was no inducement for Van Dyck, comparing, as he would be able
to, his master's pictures painted before his journey to Italy and those
which he executed afterwards, to undertake the same trouble. It is
rather to be thought that he was decided to see the artistic Mecca for
himself, by the glowing accounts of its treasures that he heard from
time to time from Rubens' own lips. For the latter, small as had been
the influence of the great Italian masters upon his work, was
nevertheless of a disposition peculiarly adapted for keenly
appreciating merit whenever it was brought under his notice. We can
quite imagine that during those early days in Antwerp his pupils whilst
at work would hear innumerable accounts of the beauties of this or that
picture, and the more enthusiastic of them would consequently only be
the more eager to judge of its beauties for themselves. During the
execution of the large canvasses that were turned out in such
quantities from the studio, Rubens doubtlessly prefaced alterations he
made by referring to many a master's method, and recounted how the
masterpieces upon which his comments were framed had been brought to
completion.
During the latter portion of the time Van Dyck stopped with Rubens he
was only acting as his assistant, and consequently would be free to
leave when he liked. He would probably be quite aware that his
technique was the equal of his master's, and would realise that he had
received all the tuition he possibly could in his present situation.
Ambitious as he was, there is no doubt that he yearned for an
opportunity to learn for himself the message the great masters had to
impart to him. Whilst we can quite imagine that Rubens would be sorry
to part with so capable an assistant, there was not any evidence that
he did not do everything in his power to assist him to carry out his
project.
In 1623--when he was but twenty-four years of age--Van Dyck left
Antwerp on his journey southward. He appears not to have got any
further than a village near Brussels, where he succumbed to the
attractions of a certain young lady named Annah van Ophem. At her
instigation he painted two pictures for the parish church there. In
one, representing St. Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar, he took
himself as a model for the saint. The parish authorities being, it is
said, of a mercenary turn of mind, had it valued, and, hearing that it
was worth 4000 florins, sold it to a M. Hoët. The people of the
village, however, hearing of the sale, determined to prevent the
removal of the picture at all costs, and when the purchaser arrived he
found not only the peasants, but their wives and children, armed, and
was obliged to escape ignominiously through the priest's garden and
return to Brussels without his prize. Whilst still residing at the
village, Van Dyck painted the portrait of Annah van Ophem, surrounded
with the dogs belonging to the Infanta Isabella, of which either she or
her father had charge, and a picture of the Holy Family, in which she
figured as the principal personage.
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