He was a Fleming by birth, and worked in the studio at Antwerp for several years as an assistant of Rubens; then he went to Italy to learn from the great pictures of the Italian Renaissance, as so many Northern artists wished to do. It has been said that the works of Titian influenced his youthful mind the most. Van Dyck spent three years in Genoa, where he was employed by those foremost in its life to paint their portraits. Many of these superb canvases have been dispersed to enrich the galleries of both hemispheres, public and private; but the proud, handsome semblances of some of his sitters, dressed in rich velvet, pearls, and lace, look down upon us still from the bare walls of their once magnificent palaces, with that 'grand air' for which the eye and the brush of Van Dyck have long remained unrivalled. When he returned to Flanders from Italy, he had attained a style of painting entirely his own and very different from that of his great master, Rubens. The William II of Orange picture is an excellent example of Van Dyck's work. The child is a prince: we know it as plainly as if Van Dyck had spoken the word before unveiling his canvas. His erect attitude, his dignified bearing, his perfect self-possession and ease, show that he has been trained in a high school of manners. But there is also something in the delicate oval of the face, the well-cut nose and mouth, and the graceful growth of the hair, that speak of refined breeding. Distinction is the key-note of the picture. [Illustration: WILLIAM II. OF ORANGE From the picture by Van Dyck, in the Hermitage Gallery, Leningrad] This little Prince had in his veins the blood of William the Silent, and became the father of our William III. Poor human nature is too easily envious, and some deny the reality, in fact, of the distinction, the grace, of Van Dyck's portrayed men and women. Nevertheless, Van Dyck's vision, guiding his brush, was as rare an endowment as envy is a common one, and has higher authority to show us what to look for, to see, and to enjoy. Van Dyck was the first painter who taught people how they ought to look, to befit an admirer's view of their aristocratic rank. His portraits thus express the social position of the sitter as well as the individual character. Although this has been an aim of portrait-painters in modern times, when they have been painting people of rank, it was less usual in the seventeenth century.