Portrait of Charles de Lorraine, fourth Duke of Guise in armour

The man in armour here was a French prince who had run out of room at home. Charles de Lorraine, fourth duke of Guise, fell foul of Cardinal Richelieu, the power behind the French throne, by taking the side of the exiled queen mother Marie de' Medici. In 1631 he left France for Italy, and his family found shelter in Florence under the protection of their Medici kin. Sustermans painted him there around 1632 in polished armour, every inch the soldier, though by then he was a nobleman with no army and no country to command. He never went home. Two of his sons died during the exile, and the duke himself died in 1640 at Cuna, south of Siena, still waiting for a return to France that came only after his death.