Triptychon des Benedetto Portinari

The Portinari were Florentines who ran the Medici bank's branch in Bruges, and Bruges is where Benedetto Portinari, in 1487, went to the city's leading painter, Hans Memling, for this. It began as a small folding triptych: a Madonna and Child in the centre, Benedetto's name-saint Benedict on one wing, and Benedetto himself, about 21, praying on the other. The three panels once shared a single loggia and one continuous landscape behind them. They have since been split up. The portrait hangs here in Florence, the city his family came from, while the Madonna and the saint are now in Berlin. On the back of his panel someone recorded his motto: de bono in melius, from good to better.