St. George with Donor

In 1436 Jan van Eyck finished an altarpiece for Joris van der Paele, a canon of Saint Donatian's church in Bruges. In it Saint George stands in armour, and in his polished shield the reflection of a small figure can be made out, often taken for the painter himself. Bruges painters remembered the trick. Memling, working in the same city some 50 years later, uses it on this wing. Saint George in full armour presents the man kneeling in prayer in front of him, and, as the museum points out, the peaceful scene on the facing wing is mirrored in the bright metal, the Virgin and her angels in their rose garden. Netherlandish painters liked such reflections because they showed what a brush could do. The donor's name has not come down to us. Its present frame was made in Munich in 1936 by the frame-maker Georg Ulrich.