Angel with an Olive Branch

Around 1477 Hans Memling was the busiest painter in Bruges, a Flemish city grown rich on cloth and banking, turning out small panels for private prayer. This little angel, barely the size of a book, holds an olive branch, the old emblem of divine peace, and once belonged to a larger devotional set. Its companion, an angel gripping a sword, survives elsewhere, so the two together offered the believer both mercy and judgement. Memling gives the figure a calm, almost expressionless face against plain gold, the quiet finish that made his work prized across Europe. Italian bankers and merchants living in Bruges bought panels like this and shipped them home, which is how Memling's manner travelled south into Italy.