Van Dyck painted it as an article of dress in due subordination to the face, not as an opportunity for reflecting light and becoming the most important thing in the picture.
We have seen how Rembrandt, Peter de Hoogh, Cuyp, Rubens, and Van Dyck were all contemporaries, born within an area of ground smaller far than England.

Yet the range of their subjects was widely different, and each painter gave his individuality full play.

The desires of the public were not stereotyped and fixed, as they had been when all alike wanted their religious aspirations expressed in art.

The patrons of that epoch had various likings, as we have to-day, and the painter developed along the lines most congenial to himself.

Unless he could make people like what he enjoyed painting, he could not make a living.
If they had no eyes to learn to see, he might remain unappreciated, like Rembrandt, until long after his death.