The lamentation over the dead Christ

Around 1635 Anthony van Dyck was mostly in London, the celebrated court painter to Charles I, but this altarpiece was made for home, for Antwerp. It was commissioned by Cesare Alessandro Scaglia, a Savoyard abbot and diplomat, to hang above his own tomb in the church of the Recollects here. So a man arranged, while still alive, for this scene to watch over his grave: the dead Christ laid out across the front of the picture on a white sheet, his mother's arms flung open above him in grief. Van Dyck had painted this subject several times, and this was one of his last versions. Scaglia himself kneels before the Virgin and Child in a companion picture van Dyck made for him.