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 majority of his most important patrons in the nobility, such as Lord Wharton and the Earls of Bedford, Northumberland and Pembroke, took the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War that broke out soon after his death. The King in Council by letters patent granted van Dyck "denizenship" in 1638, and he married Mary, the daughter of Patrick Ruthven, who, although the title was forfeited, styled himself Lord Ruthven. She was a Lady-in-waiting to the Queen, in 1639-40; this may have been instigated by the King in an attempt to keep him in England. He had spent most of 1634