WHEN Van Dyck returned to London in 1632 to work for Charles I, one of his first tasks was to restore Titian's Galba from the series of Roman Emperors, acquired shortly before with the Mantuan Collection. At the same time he was asked to paint a copy of the Vitellius, which had been 'utterlie spoyled by quicksilver',1 and, as the colours of the original were 'washed qijt away', he almost certainly had to rely on the engraving by Aegidius Sadeler for much of the detail. The commission was far from being a menial task for a court painter, and his payment for re-creating the Vitellius was twenty pounds, about the same sum that he might have expected for a half-length portrait at this time.2 It is also worth noting that it was Van Dyck rather than any of the other artists employed by the king - includ- ing Rubens - who was thought to be capable of re-creating the Titian. When Van Dyck used the pose of the Otho from Titian's series (Fig.1) for his half-length portrait of Charles I in armour (Fig.2), the king must have appreci- ated the allusion, although it has been overlooked in more recent times. Van Dyck's almost single-minded passion for the works of Titian, the large group of paintings by him which he owned, as well as the number of painted copies after Titian in his collection, all marked him out as the great Venetian's disciple and heir.

AN effectively forgotten painting by Van Dyck (Fig.26) of which the exceptional interest and importance was promptly recognised by Derek Johns,' has recently been discovered
in a family collection in the Low Countries. Since then it has been cleaned, relined and, to the very small extent necessary, retouched in London. The painting will be on show in the Van Dyck exhibition which is due to open to the public on 11 th November of this year at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.