Equestrian portrait of Prince Tomaso of Savoy-Carignan

Van Dyck painted this huge canvas in 1634, the year Prince Thomas Francis of Savoy took up command in the Spanish Netherlands. The prince rears up on a pale Andalusian horse, a Spanish breed chosen as a nod to the masters he now served, and wears armor of Spanish make and the red sash of Savoy's highest order of chivalry. The rearing pose is not just for show. It reads as an image of a man holding the reins of power steady even when the horse beneath him will not stand still. A century later, in 1742, the picture was sold to the King of Sardinia, which is how it came to hang in Turin, the old Savoy capital.