Antoon van Dyck (1599-1641), Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1635, Oil on canvas, 115 cm × 208 cm, KMSKA, Antwerp
In late 1622 or early 1623, Antoon van Dyck passed through Turin during the Italian journey he had begun the previous year from his base in Genoa. Cesare Alessandro Scaglia (1592–1641), a Savoyard diplomat who had been serving as his duchy’s ambassador to the papal court, was home between postings at around the same time. Whether the two actually met on that occasion is not certain. No document confirms it. But it is the earliest point at which a connection becomes plausible, and Van Dyck is known to have made contact with members of the ruling House of Savoy during this visit.
By the mid-1630s, Scaglia had become one of Van Dyck’s most committed patrons. His will would eventually list at least seven paintings by Van Dyck, possibly as many as ten: portraits, religious subjects and a mythological scene. The relationship lasted until both men died in 1641. In its final phase it produced one of the most telling signs of personal closeness. After Van Dyck’s marriage to Mary Ruthven (c. 1622–1645), which took place in 1639 or early 1640 (the sources differ), Scaglia acquired a quadruple portrait showing Charles I and Henrietta Maria alongside Van Dyck and his new wife. The picture does not survive. But a patron does not place his painter beside the English king and queen in a single composition unless the relationship goes well beyond the transactional.
Scaglia had spent his career moving between diplomacy and espionage. He served the House of Savoy in Rome, Paris and London. He brokered alliances and undermined them in roughly equal measure. He used gifts of paintings to open doors at foreign courts, and built friendships with figures like the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I that served political ends as much as personal ones. Rubens (1577–1640), himself a diplomat, called him a man of the keenest intellect. In 1632, Scaglia moved to Brussels and entered the service of Spain, a shift that put him at odds with the new Duke of Savoy. In 1635 he fell seriously ill and barely survived. By 1637 he had joined the Franciscan order in Antwerp, drawn to the community of the Friars Minor, also known as the Recollects, and he began preparing for a retirement that would end with his burial among them.
It was during these years that Scaglia asked Van Dyck to paint a Lamentation for his tomb. The painting is generally dated to around 1635, though the KMSKA, which holds it, gives a date of c. 1640, and a preparatory drawing in the Morgan Library is catalogued as c. 1635–40. Scaglia was still alive when the commission was placed, and fully aware of what he was asking for: an image of Christ’s dead body to hang in the Chapel of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin in the Franciscan church in Antwerp, above the marble tomb he had ordered for himself.
Van Dyck keeps the scene spare. Christ lies across a stone slab, heavy and slack. The Virgin stands behind him, her arms outspread in a gesture that echoes the Crucifixion. It is a pose of open grief, but there is no cry, no collapse. Saint John and two angels are present. John shows the angels the wound left by the nails. The mourning is quiet throughout. The palette reinforces this. Cool, muted fabrics and a dark background set off the warmer tones of skin, so that the body becomes the single point to which everything else gives way.
In another late Scaglia commission, the Abbé Scaglia Adoring the Virgin and Child (National Gallery, London), technical analysis has shown that the blue pigment contains a high proportion of lapis lazuli, among the most expensive materials a painter could use. Scaglia, it seems, wanted no economy in works made for his spiritual account. Whether the same applies to the Lamentation is not clear, but the care Van Dyck has taken with the picture, its restraint, its refusal to reach for easy effect, suggests a commission that mattered to both men.
The two angels lift the scene beyond a purely earthly setting. Whether they promise resurrection or simply witness death is left open. For a painting meant to sit above a tomb, that openness feels deliberate. Scaglia was commissioning an image of Christ’s dead body while preparing for his own death. He must have understood the echo.
What is striking is how far the Lamentation stands from the court portraits that had made Van Dyck wealthy and famous by the mid-1630s. The painting draws on what Van Dyck had absorbed during his years in Italy between 1621 and 1627: the gravity and stillness of Italian devotional tradition, brought back to Antwerp and cooled. It suggests where his deeper commitments as a painter lay, once the obligations of courtly portraiture were set aside. Whether that is a fair reading or a sentimental one is worth asking. But the picture invites it.
References
Martin, J.R. and Feigenbaum, G. (1979) Van Dyck as a Religious Artist. Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University; Princeton University Press
Barnes, S.J., De Poorter, N., Millar, O. and Vey, H. (2004) Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings. New Haven: Yale University Press.
KMSKA – Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (n.d.) The Lamentation over the Dead Christ. Available at: https://kmska.be/en/masterpiece/lamentation-over-dead-christ-2 (Accessed: 10 March 2025).
National Gallery, London (n.d.) Anthony van Dyck, The Abbé Scaglia Adoring the Virgin and Child, NG4889. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/anthony-van-dyck-the-abbe-scaglia-adoring-the-virgin-and-child (Accessed: 17 May 2026).
Cifani, A. and Monetti, F. (1992) ‘New light on the Abbé Scaglia and Van Dyck’, The Burlington Magazine, 134(1073), pp. 506–514.
National Gallery, London (n.d.) Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of the Abbot Scaglia, NG6575. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/anthony-van-dyck-portrait-of-the-abbot-scaglia (Accessed: 10 March 2025).
Osborne, T. (2002) Dynasty and Diplomacy in the Court of Savoy: Political Culture and the Thirty Years’ War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Osborne, T. (2007) ‘Van Dyck, Alessandro Scaglia and the Caroline court: friendship, collecting and diplomacy in the early seventeenth century’, The Seventeenth Century, 22(1), pp. 24–41. Available at, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30053318_Van_Dyck_Alessandro_Scaglia_and_the_Caroline_Court_Friendship_Collecting_and_Diplomacy_in_the_Early_Seventeenth_Century ( Accessed 9 March 2025)
RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History (n.d.) Anthony van Dyck, Bewening van Christus [The Lamentation over the Dead Christ], c. 1635–40. RKDimages, image no. 48543. Available at: https://rkd.nl/explore/images/48543 (Accessed: 10 March 2025).
Roy, A. (1999) ‘The National Gallery Van Dycks: technique and development’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 20, pp. 50–83.Available at , https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/publications/technical-bulletin/technical-bulletin-volume-20 (Accessed 10 March 2025)
Vlaamse Kunstcollectie (n.d.) Anthony van Dyck, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1635, KMSKA. Available at: https://vlaamsekunstcollectie.be/en/news/anthony-van-dyck-the-lamentation-of-christ-kmska (Accessed: 9 March 2025).