Mary and Child with two Angels Making Music

This panel is barely the size of a postcard, about 12 centimetres tall, painted on oak in Bruges in the 1490s. It was never made to hang on a wall. It is one half of a small folding diptych, the kind a person kept for private prayer and could carry while travelling, opening it like a book. Gerard David gives the Virgin and Child the old Eastern icon pose the Greeks called Eleousa, mother and son pressing cheek to cheek, and sets two angels beside them quietly playing instruments. Look closely and you can still make out separate strands of hair and the tiny nails on the fingers, worked with a brush of a few bristles. Closed, this tender scene folds shut against its companion panel, where Christ is saying goodbye to his mother before his last journey.