Bildnis des Tommaso di Folco Portinari

Tommaso Portinari ran the Medici bank's branch in Bruges, a Florentine handling the family's money far from home in the wealthiest trading city of the north. Around 1470, near the time he married Maria Baroncelli, a bride of fourteen, he sat for Hans Memling. The panel was not meant to hang alone. It once formed a wing of a small folding triptych for private prayer, with Tommaso and his young wife turned inward toward a central image of the Virgin and Child, hands joined in devotion. Memling set him behind a painted stone ledge so he seems to lean into our space. He would later overreach, backing Charles the Bold's wars with the bank's money and ruining the branch he now managed so confidently.