Portrait of Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick

Van Dyck had just become court painter to Charles I of England, and around 1634 he painted the Earl of Warwick in the shimmering silk and easy swagger he gave nearly every aristocrat at that court. Warwick was an odd fit for the treatment. He was a hard Puritan and a fighting seaman who ran privateers against Spanish shipping, and behind him Van Dyck tucks a suit of discarded armour and a glimpse of ships to hint at that other life. Within a decade the polish counted for nothing. When civil war broke out in 1642, Warwick sided with Parliament against the very king whose painter had flattered him, and Parliament put him in command of the navy it had seized from the crown.