Triptych of Jan Floreins

The man kneeling at the front left of this Adoration is not a saint or a king. He is Brother Jan Floreins, a friar of Saint John's Hospital in Bruges, who paid Hans Memling to paint the altarpiece in 1479. An inscription on the frame even gives his age that year, 36. He knelt himself into the holy scene the way patrons liked to, sharing the stable with Mary, the Christ child and the three kings come to worship. What makes it rare is where it still hangs. The triptych has never left the hospital it was made for, so you can see it in the same Bruges rooms where Floreins once prayed before it, more than five centuries ago.