Reiterporträt Kaiser Karls V.

Charles V had been dead more than 60 years when this was painted around 1620, so the young Anthony van Dyck, barely into his twenties, had no living emperor to sit for him. He worked instead from an image everyone in his world knew, Titian's great equestrian portrait of Charles at the battle of Muhlberg, most likely reaching it through a copy or print that had passed through the Antwerp workshop of his teacher, Rubens. What he made is closer to homage than record, a Habsburg ancestor mounted and armoured for some descendant who wanted the bloodline made visible on a wall. Horse and rider fill almost the entire field, the sky pushed low behind the plumed helmet.