Madonna and Child with a Donor

This panel was painted in 1757 by an unknown hand, but the design behind it is far older. It copies a Madonna that Jan van Eyck began around 1441 for Nicolas van Maelbeke, head of a church in Ypres, a work van Eyck left unfinished at his death and that later vanished. Copies and a careful drawing are much of what survives of it, so a modest painting like this one carries a memory of something now lost. Mary sits holding the Christ Child while the kneeling donor is presented to her at the side. Even at three centuries' remove the copyist keeps van Eyck's stillness, the heavy folds of Mary's robe pooling on the floor.