Saint John the Baptist (recto); a Skull (verso)

This little panel was made for private prayer, probably in Bruges around 1470, when the city was one of the richest trading towns in northern Europe and Memling was its most sought-after painter. On the front, John the Baptist stands in a green wilderness with the lamb at his feet, the sign by which he named Christ. Turn the panel over and there is a skull painted in a stone niche. That was the point of the back: when the diptych was folded shut, the skull was what the owner saw, a plain reminder of death to steady the mind before prayer. The other half, a Saint Veronica, is now in Washington. By the early 1500s both wings belonged to the Bembo family, Venetian patricians, which is how a Bruges devotional object ended up carrying a Venetian name.