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Antonius Triest (1576-1657) was the fifth bishop of Bruges and the seventh bishop of Ghent. His intelligent interest in the visual arts gained him the friendship of Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck and David Teniers the Younger. He commissioned his own tomb from François Duquesnoy, and it was completed in 1651.
This tomb, erected in the choir of St Bavo's Cathedral is the most important work of Jérôme Duquesnoy the Younger. The tomb was the first of a new type in the Southern Netherlands, based on Italian models, in which the figure of the deceased became the most important part of a more grandly staged allegorical scheme.. The tripartite arrangement of this monument determined the direction of the future evolution of episcopal tombs in the Southern Netherlands: Bishop Triest reclines 'demi-couché' on his tomb between the Virgin Mary (an almost literal copy of François Duquesnoy's St Susanna) and Christ (derived from Michelangelo's Christ).
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