Saint Martin and the Beggar (van Dyck) Saint Martin and the Beggar (van Dyck) Saint Martin and the Beggar is a c.1618 painting of Saint Martin of Tours by the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck. The painting portrays the saint sharing his cloak with a beggar. It had been in van Dyck's studio for some time by 1621 and may have been completed around 1618. In 1621 he was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Brabant, Ferdinand de Boisschot, to deliver a painting of St Martin for the church dedicated to that saint in Zaventem. Van Dyck gave him this painting in fulfilment of the
Ernest van Dyck prodigue" in Paris on 27 July 1884. With Camille de Roddaz, Van Dyck provided the libretto for Massenet's ballet set in Courtrai ('Légende mimée et dansée en un acte') "Le Carillon", for the Vienna Opera in February 1892. He appeared regularly at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels in 1894, where his repertoire included Wagner (Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan) and Massenet (Werther, Des Grieux). Van Dyck made a few acoustic records in the early 1900s (for Pathé, Fonotipia and Homophone) which show a voice prematurely past its prime after a dozen years of hard, declamatory use in heavy Wagnerian parts.