Portrait of the Abbot Scaglia

Artist: Anthony van Dyck (Belgian, 1599 - 1641)

Original Dimensions: 79" x 48 1/2"

Location: National Gallery of Art, London

About Artwork: (1634) "The Abbot Scaglia (1592–1641), whose full name was Cesare Alessandro Scaglia di Verrua, was a cleric and diplomat well known in Rome, Madrid, London and Paris for his service to the House of Savoy and Philip IV of Spain. Scaglia was also an art collector of renown who knew, among others, Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and Velázquez. After they met in the 1620s, Scaglia became one of Van Dyck’s most important patrons. In this portrait, painted in Antwerp in 1634 when Scaglia was 42, Van Dyck shows him as a living statue, his pose and toga-like robes recalling Roman sculptures. Atop a body elongated to give elegance and life sits the head of a man who has seen much of life. He is a formidable figure used to moving in the highest echelons of court circles, whose expression, hard to read, nevertheless confirms Rubens’s estimation of him as ‘a man of the keenest intellect’." - (National Gallery of Art, London)