Benedetto Portinari triptych: Right wing, Portrait of a Praying Man

The man with his hands pressed together in prayer is almost certainly Benedetto Portinari, a Florentine in his early twenties who was living in Bruges in 1487, working in the family bank that his uncle Tommaso ran there for the Medici. Florentines abroad liked to be painted by Flemish masters, and Benedetto ordered a small hinged triptych: this wing with his own likeness, Saint Benedict, his name-saint, on the far side, and a Madonna and Child in the middle. He is turned to his right, gazing toward the Virgin who once sat beside him, before the three panels were separated. On the back of this one his personal motto is painted, DE BONO IN MELIUS, from good to better. The central Madonna is now in Berlin, while this portrait and the saint stayed in Florence.