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
Anthony van Dyck Henrietta Maria, as well as their children. Many portraits were done in several versions, to be sent as diplomatic gifts or given to supporters of the increasingly embattled king. Altogether van Dyck has been estimated to have painted forty portraits of King Charles himself, as well as about thirty of the Queen, nine of the Earl of Strafford, and multiple ones of other courtiers. He painted many of the court, and also himself and his mistress, Margaret Lemon. In England he developed a version of his style which combined a relaxed elegance and ease with an understated authority in his