Christ on the Cross with the Virgin Mary and Saints

On 29 November 1629 the Capuchin friars of Dendermonde consecrated their new monastery church, and Antonius Triest, the bishop of Ghent, gave them a Calvary by van Dyck for the high altar. It stands nearly four metres tall. Francis of Assisi kneels at the foot of the cross in the brown habit the friars themselves wore, which is why he is in the scene at all. They kept it for 165 years. In 1794 French troops took it to Paris along with a great deal of other Flemish church painting. Under Napoleon it passed to the new museum in Brussels in 1802, then to the academy in Ghent, and in 1816 it came back to Dendermonde. The friars never got it back. It went to the Church of Our Lady, where it hangs today, carrying no signature and no date, and it returned to the restorers in 2024.