Tommaso di Folco Portinari (1428–1501); Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, geb. 1456)

These two panels show a Florentine banker and his very young bride, painted in Bruges around 1470. Tommaso Portinari ran the local branch of the Medici bank, the most powerful financial house in Europe, and he commissioned Memling around the time he married Maria Baroncelli, who was about 14. Their hands are raised in prayer because the portraits were the outer wings of a small folding altarpiece. In the middle, now lost, would have been a Virgin and Child that they were shown adoring. Memling sets each figure in front of a painted stone frame, so they seem to lean into our space, and he records every detail of Tommaso's face down to the stubble and a small scar on his chin.