Portrait of Tomaso di Savoia-Carignano

Tommaso Francesco of Savoy, prince of Carignano, was born in Turin and spent 1634 in Brussels as captain-general of the Spanish army in Flanders. He had crossed from French service to Spanish service not long before, and Madrid kept a careful eye on him. That September, Spanish and Imperial troops won the battle of Nördlingen in Bavaria, and the victorious Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, brother of Philip IV, carried on north to Brussels, arriving in November to take charge of the Netherlands.

Van Dyck, over from London that year, painted the prince in the equipment of his command. Dark armour, a lace collar spread over it, the baton in his right hand, the left hand resting on a helmet. A small painted cartouche at the lower left gives his name. The same man sat that year for the huge equestrian portrait now in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.