Portrait of a Male Donor

In the last decades of the 15th century Bruges was one of the richest trading cities in Europe, and Hans Memling was its most sought-after painter. The merchants and foreign bankers living there wanted exactly this: a small, private image to pray before at home. This panel is one half of such an object. The man kneels with his hands together, turned slightly to his right, because he was originally looking at something now separated from him, most likely a Virgin and Child, while a female donor occupied the companion panel. We do not know his name. Memling gives him no grand setting, only steady attention: the carefully drawn hairline, the plain devout face of a real person who paid to be shown at his prayers. Long after Bruges lost its wealth, the picture passed through the great Brussels collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the Habsburg governor who gathered Netherlandish paintings in the 17th century, which is part of how a private Bruges donor ended up on a wall in Bucharest.