Ritratto di Cornelis van der Geest

Van Dyck was about 21 when he painted this, already the sharpest young talent in Antwerp and not long out of Rubens's workshop. His sitter, Cornelis van der Geest, was around 65, a spice merchant who had grown rich enough to spend his money on pictures and on the painters who made them. The two men knew that world from opposite ends, the prodigy and the old collector. Look closely at the eyes and you can see tiny flecks of white standing for moisture, and the ruff built from thick, dragged strokes of paint. For a long time the National Gallery in London owned it as a Rubens, having bought it under that name in 1864 before deciding the hand was really the young van Dyck's.