DIEPENBECK, Abraham van (1599-1675), was born at Herzogenbusch, and studied painting at Antwerp, where he became one of Rubens’s “hundred pupils.” Rubens complains in his letters that, being overwhelmed with applications for apprentices’ indentures, he refused to accept as disciples even the children of some of his best friends. Diepenbeck was one of those who was fortunate enough to obtain admission to Rubens’s workshop. But he was not one of the cleverest of Rubens’s followers, and he succeeded, at the best, in imitating the style and aping the peculiarities of his master. We see this in his earliest pictures—a portrait dated 1629 in the Munich Pinakothek, and a Distribution of Alms of the same period in the same collection. Yet even at this time there were moments when Diepenbeck probably fancied that he might take another path. A solitary copperplate executed with his own hand in 1630 represents a peasant sitting under a tree holding the bridle of an ass, aud this is a minute and finished specimen of the engraver’s art which shows that the master might at one time have hoped to rival the animal draughtsmen who flourished in the schools of Holland. However, large commissions now poured in upon him; he was asked for altar-pieces, subject-pieces, aud pagan allegories. He was tempted to try the profession of a glass-painter, and at last he gave up every other occupation for the lucrative business of a draughtsman and designer for engravings. Most of Diepenbeck’s important canvases are in Continental galleries. The best are the Marriage of St Catherine at Berlin, and Mary with Angels Wailing over the Dead Body of Christ in the Belvedere at Vienna, the first a very fair specimen of the artist’s skill, the second a picture of more energy and feeling ...