In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are a number of these portrait drawings of great interest to us, since many of the portraits painted from them have been lost.  As a record of remarkable people of that day they are invaluable, for in a few powerful strokes Holbein could set down the likeness of any face.  But when he came to paint the portrait he was not satisfied with a mere likeness.  He painted too ’his habit as he lived.’  Erasmus is shown reading in his study, the merchant in his office surrounded by the tokens of his business, and Henry VIII. standing firmly with his legs wide apart as if bestriding a hemisphere.  But I think that you will like this fine portrait of the infant prince best of all, and that is why I have chosen it in preference to a likeness of any of the statesmen, scholars, queens, and courtiers who played a great part in their world, but are not half so charming to look upon as little Prince Edward.

CHAPTER IX

REMBRANDT

After the death of Holbein, artists in the north of Europe passed through troublous times till the end of the sixteenth century.  France and the Netherlands were devastated by wars.  You may remember that the Netherlands had belonged in the fifteenth century to the Dukes of Burgundy?  Through the marriage of the only daughter of the last Duke, these territories passed into the possession of the King of Spain, who remained a Catholic, whilst the northern portion of the Netherlands became sturdily Protestant.  Their struggle, under the leadership of William the Silent, against the yoke of Spain, is one of the stirring pages of history.  By the beginning of the seventeenth century, seven of the northern states of the Netherlands, of which Holland was the chief, had emerged as practically independent.  The southern portion of the Netherlands, including the old province of Flanders, remained Catholic and was governed by a Spanish Prince who held his court at Brussels.

When peace came at last, there was a remarkable outburst of painting in each of the two countries.  Rubens was the master painter in Flanders.  Of him and of his pupil Van Dyck we shall hear more in the next chapter.  In Holland there was a yet more wide-spread activity.  Indomitable perseverance had been needed for so small a country to throw off the rule of a great power like Spain.  The long struggle seems to have called into being a kindred spirit manifesting itself in every branch of the national life.  Dutch merchants, Dutch fishermen, and Dutch colonizers made themselves felt as a force throughout the world.  The spirit by which Dutchmen achieved political success was pre-eminent in the qualities which brought them to the front rank in art.  There were literally hundreds of painters in Holland, few of them bad.  That does not mean that all Dutchmen had the magical power of vision belonging to the greatest artists, the power that transforms the objects of daily view