From Van Dyck to Bellotto: Splendor at the Court of Savoy is the centrepiece of the Brussels’ art centre’s Turin Festival. The exhibition contains paintings by Flemish and Italian masters and tapestries and manuscripts that once adorned the palaces of the court of Savoy between the 15th and 18th centuries.

Savoy started out as a small mediaeval state below Lake Geneva and west of the river Rhone but grew in power and territory throughout the centuries, with its ruling princes swapping kingdoms and making strategic marriages to increase their political power. The state was instrumental in the unification of Italy, providing the new country's first ruler and its first capital, Turin.

Most of the art from the Savoy palaces was given over by the family to be housed in the Sabauda gallery in Turin in the 19th century, but some of the works ended up in museums across Europe. With the Sabauda now closed for renovation and the pieces expecting to be re-housed in a new museum complex based in the Savoy palaces in 2011, the 100 or so works have been reunited and are on tour, with Brussels welcoming them ahead of New York and Shanghai.

The Savoy princes certainly liked Flemish art, but it is hard to tell whether they were deeply interested in the scenes of Flemish life depicted in the paintings or if it was the signature that mattered. By the end of the 16th century, owning work by a Flemish master such as Jan Breughel or commissioning a portrait by Van Dyck was a significant status symbol, a way of keeping up with the Royal Joneses across Europe, and especially in the English court.

It’s difficult to put yourself in the position of a Savoy courtier, roaming palace corridors and suddenly confronted by a scene of young women parading in front of the stepped gables of Grote Zavel in Brussels. Would they have seen Antoine Sallaert’s painting “Procession of the Pucelles of the Sablon” as a scene from a half-understood world far away, or simply a subtle variation on the religious processions familiar in their own culture?

Our long-gone courtier would have had less trouble with what are known as vanitas paintings, which were produced by artists on both sides of the Alps. These works symbolise the transience of life and the passing of youth, often through detailed still lives featuring decaying fruit and flowers.

One of the most impressive in the collection is by Jan Davidsz De Heem and his son Cornelius, originally from Utrecht but established citizens of Antwerp in the 17th century. Entitled “Fruit, Flowers, Mushrooms, Insects, Snails and Reptiles”, it shows ripe and gleaming fruit, piled in what seems to be a clearing near a young oak tree. The skins of mouth-watering pomegranates and white peaches are ripped to reveal tender flesh. Reptiles hide in the undergrowth and ants crawl over the fruit, a reminder that it will soon be eaten away.

De Heem was a staunch Catholic, and the work also makes symbolic references to spiritual salvation. Butterflies, often associated with the resurrection of Christ, alight on vegetation, while stalks of grain allude to the bread of the Eucharist.

It's not the only picture in the show that might leave you feeling peckish. The hyper-real attention to detail and play of light in Pieter Binoit’s “Cakes and Shellfish” has quite a strong effect, and I could almost smell the olives and capers.

Antoon Van Dyck was all the rage in the English and European courts of the 1620s and ’30s, and the collection contains several specially commissioned works. One is a rather sweet portrait of the children of Charles I of England dating from 1635. The English regent’s wife, Henrietta Maria, was the sister of Christine of France, the wife of the Savoy regent Amadeus I. Sending her sister in Turin a portrait of their children would have been something like emailing a family photo to distant relations today.

Although a large number of Flemish works were catalogued in the Savoy court inventories, the existence of many others was only known because of the correspondence between the sisters or from overseas travellers waxing lyrical about the paintings they had seen.

The collection has its fair share of figurative paintings with religious themes. Of all of these, the most captivating is Andrea Mantegna’s “Madonna and child surrounded by St John the Baptist, St Catherine of Alexandria and Other Saints”. It’s also almost like a family photograph, taken at a moment when no one is looking at the camera.

The Madonna and child are flanked by several saints, looking up, looking away or reading a book. The baby Jesus’ chubby hand alights on the forehead of another child – John the Baptist. It’s difficult to tell whether John’s expression is one of agony or ecstasy, but through his slightly open mouth you can see two milk teeth pushing through the pink gums. It’s quite surreal and immediately endearing.

Apart from the family tree and lineage of the Savoy princes on display on large panels in the halls, the show sadly contains little information on their lives. However, the Italian paintings on show make up for the lack. Bernado Bellotto’s “View of Turin from the Royal Garden” is a stunning landscape from an old bridge on the River Po that contrasts scenes of everyday life with meticulous architectural details of the palace and city receding in the distance. To the left, workmen balanced on planks are busy enlarging the palace walls while to the right of the moat, men dig drains and women hang out washing. The buzz of activity and movement offer a glimpse of everyday life in a bygone age.