A portrait of Antoon Van Dyck, often called "the Mozart of painting". If there is an enigma about Van Dyck’s character, it is complicated by a scarcity of first hand accounts of him and the almost complete lack of letters by his hand. In the nineteenth century he was often cast, disparagingly, as Rubens’s brilliant but degenerate successor - effeminate, dissolute, irresolute. These are unwarranted slurs. As an artist he was a resolute professional who commanded considerable respect amongst his clients and fellow artists.