Portrait of an Elderly Woman

In the Bruges of the late 15th century, having your face painted was a new kind of luxury. The city was one of the richest trading towns in Europe, and its merchants wanted their likenesses kept the way they kept their ledgers. This woman, in her tall white headdress against the dark, was one half of a pair. Her husband sat for the companion panel, and the two once hung hinged together like a small private book. At some point the pair was split up. His portrait now hangs in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum, while she stayed here in Houston. They were never made for an altar or for prayer. They were made so that two ordinary faces, near the end of their lives, would not be forgotten.