L'incoronazione di spine

Van Dyck was about 20 when he painted this, still the star assistant in Rubens's busy Antwerp studio and not yet the elegant court portraitist he would become in England. You can feel Rubens looking over his shoulder in the muscular bodies and the deep shadow, and Venice too, since the figure of Christ leans on a pose van Dyck borrowed from Titian. Soldiers crowd in to press the thorns down and hand him a reed for a mock sceptre, while a dog and a pair of watching men were added later, after the first version was done. Van Dyck gave the finished painting to Rubens as a gift. When Rubens died it passed to the king of Spain, which is how a young man's canvas from Antwerp ended up in Madrid.