The Abbé Scaglia adoring the Virgin and Child

Around 1634 the Abbot Scaglia, a diplomat who had spent years moving between the courts of Europe, was in poor health and thinking about his soul. He asked van Dyck for this picture for the church of the Recollect friars in Antwerp. He kneels in black with his hands pressed together, and the infant Christ, half-wriggling on his mother's lap, stretches out a hand to bless him. The Virgin looks less like an ideal type than a particular woman. The National Gallery thinks the likeliest model is Henrietta of Lorraine, Princess of Phalsbourg, whom van Dyck painted full length at about the same time, and Scaglia's will left this painting to her. Within a few years he gave up public life and moved into the Recollects' monastery, where he died in 1641.