"During his extended stay in Italy in the 1620s, Van Dyck visited Palermo. While there he painted Emmanuel Philibert (1588-1624), the Duke of Savoy's son, who was serving as the King of Spain's Viceroy in Sicily.
The emblems of a crown enclosing a palm and the knots decorating his armour (which still survives, in the Royal Armouries of Madrid), are associated with Sicily and the House of Savoy. The prince is shown holding a baton, a symbol traditionally associated with generalship. He died of the plague just weeks after sitting for this portrait. "