Portrait of George Gage with Two Attendants

Late in 1621 King James I of England sent George Gage to Rome. Gage was an English Catholic priest, and his task was to win the pope's permission for Prince Charles to marry a Spanish princess, a marriage that fell through in 1623. Van Dyck was in Rome at the same time, and the two men lived together there. The painting shows him at his other trade, buying art. He leans on a stone ledge in a black cloak while a dealer bends towards him over a marble statue, held up at the back by a Black attendant. The coat of arms carved on the stone below is the Gage family's, which is how the sitter was identified. The picture later belonged to the financier John Julius Angerstein and came to the National Gallery with his collection when the Gallery was founded in 1824.