The Donor with St John the Baptist

This small arched panel spent part of its life apart from its partner. It is the right wing of a folding diptych made in Bruges for Jean du Cellier, a spice merchant recorded in the city between 1473 and 1491, and his coat of arms lies in the grass below his knees. At some unknown date the two wings were separated. This one turns up in London in 1863, then in the Paris collection of the industrialist Eugène Secrétan, and at his sale in 1889 it was bought by the collector Édouard André. After André died, his widow, Nélie Jacquemart, gave it to the Louvre in 1894 in his memory, and the museum later rejoined it to the other wing. Behind the kneeling merchant and John the Baptist, Memling fits two more saints into the landscape, John the Evangelist writing on his island at the upper left and Saint George fighting the dragon on the rocks at the right.