Enthroned Mary with Child and Two Angels Making Music

By about 1519, when this small panel was painted, a successful composition in the Netherlands was something to study and reuse. A few years earlier Jan Gossaert had painted the central Madonna of the Malvagna Triptych, now in Palermo, seating the Virgin among angels who make music. This panel, long given to Bernard van Orley, takes up the same idea: Mary enthroned with the Christ Child, and two angels playing at her side. It is a modest object, about 34 centimetres tall, painted in tempera on an oak board, the kind of devotional picture meant for a private room rather than an altar. What carries over from Gossaert is the pose and the courtly sweetness, the crowded, jewel-like detail that Netherlandish patrons prized. The painting reached Basel through the collector Max Geldner, who gave it to the museum in 1958.