Madonna and Child

The Louvre dates this small arched panel to 1529, the year before Quinten Metsys died in Antwerp. At about 68 by 51 centimetres, it is sized for a private room and for prayer at home.

Some scholars once tied it to a Virgin and Child owned by Archduchess Isabella, ruler of the Southern Netherlands, a painting that went from her estate to the Brussels church of Sainte-Gudule. The Louvre calls that link too hasty. The Brussels picture was about twice the size of this one, and it seems to have vanished before the 18th century began.

This panel arrived by a slower road. The Paris collector Paul Rattier left it to the Louvre in 1890, but his brother and sister-in-law kept the use of it for life, and it entered the museum only in 1903, after both of them had died.