Outpouring of the Holy Ghost (Pentecost)

When van Dyck painted this he was still a teenager, though already a full master in the Antwerp painters' guild. That was unusual, and it says how fast his gift was recognized around 1619. Even so, he was working in the orbit of Rubens, whose Antwerp studio was the busiest in northern Europe, and you can feel that older painter's weight and heat in these figures. The scene is Pentecost, the moment 50 days after Easter when the apostles and the mother of Christ, shut in a room, feel a rushing wind and see small flames settle over each head as the Holy Spirit arrives. Van Dyck painted it as one of three canvases for a convent near Antwerp. Much later it traveled to Prussia. Frederick the Great bought it for the picture gallery he built beside his palace at Sanssouci in Potsdam, where it still hangs in one of the oldest gallery buildings in Germany.