Madonna Standing

This is among the first paintings we can securely give to Rogier van der Weyden, made around 1430 when he was still a young painter in the southern Netherlands. The Virgin stands nursing the Child in a shallow stone niche, and if you look at the carved arch around them it is crowded with tiny figures painted to imitate grey stone: God the Father above, the dove of the Holy Spirit, and Adam and Eve at the sides, the whole story of salvation packed into a doorway. Rogier had almost certainly just seen Jan van Eyck's great Ghent Altarpiece, and its weight and dense detail press on this small panel. It is the left half of a diptych. The right wing, showing Saint Catherine, has always been thought weaker and is usually given to his workshop.