Portrait of the Abbé Scaglia

Cesare Alessandro Scaglia was 42 when van Dyck painted him in Antwerp in 1634. He was a churchman and diplomat for the Duke of Savoy and the King of Spain, a collector who knew Rubens and Velázquez, and in official papers of the time an intelligence gatherer known as Agent 2X. Van Dyck makes him into a statue. The long black robes fall like a Roman toga, and he leans against a column the way ancient figures lean on their supports. Drawings show the painter first planned him seated, and the abandoned chair is still in the background. The dark halo around his head is the ground of an earlier head study, slowly showing through the paint. The one lively touch is at the hem, which Scaglia lifts just enough to let his shoes show.