Saint Rosalie Crowned with Roses by Two Angels

Van Dyck painted this in 1624, while plague was shutting Palermo down. That same summer, diggers on the mountain above the city found bones taken to be those of Rosalie, a hermit of the 12th century, and Palermo made her its protector. The canvas itself ended up in Spain. Inventories of the royal palace in Madrid place it in 1772 by the passage to the king's pew, and from 1776 in the prince's dressing room. When Joseph Bonaparte, whom his brother Napoleon had made king of Spain, gave up Madrid, he left with more than 200 paintings taken out of their frames, rolled and packed into travelling chests. The British army took the baggage at Vitoria in June 1813. Wellington wrote to the restored Ferdinand VII offering the pictures back, and the king answered that he was touched by the duke's delicacy and would not deprive him of what had come to him by means as just as they were honourable. More than 80 of those paintings still hang in Wellington's London house.