St Martin Dividing his Cloak

By late November 1620 van Dyck had left Antwerp for London, and this canvas stayed behind in the house of Rubens, in whose workshop he had been employed. It sat there long enough for other painters to work from it, and several copies after it are known.

He had painted the subject once already, a smaller panel for the parish church at Zaventem outside Brussels. This one is much larger, and the crowd around the horse is fuller: a woman with two children, a second beggar, a dog.

The picture then went abroad. It was in Spain by the 1740s, and Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of George II, bought it before September 1747. Frederick died in 1751 without ever reaching the throne. The Royal Collection lists the painting as van Dyck's own work, with no qualifier attached, under number 405878.