Nicolas Trigault was a Jesuit missionary who spent much of his life working in China. On the controversial advice of Matteo Ricci, one of the founders of the country’s Jesuit mission, Trigault traded his plain black Jesuit garb for the robes of a Chinese literatus. Ricci believed that by appropriating the dress of the country’s intellectual elites, the Jesuits would gain more direct access to powerful members of Chinese society. Trigault appears to have brought his Chinese clothes with him during a return visit to Europe, where he was drawn by seventeen-year-old Anthony van Dyck.
Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), The Jesuit Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume, 1617. Black and green chalk on laid paper, traces of framing line in black chalk. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1909, inv. III, 179.