Virgin and Child Enthroned

This panel is barely bigger than a hand, about 16 centimetres tall, and it is generally taken to be the earliest surviving work by Rogier van der Weyden, made around 1433 when he was newly established in Brussels. It shows a motif Flemish painters had just invented, the Virgin seated in a shallow niche on the outside wall of a Gothic church, as if she were a living statue that had stepped into colour. Everything around her is carved with tiny scenes, prophets in the arch, and along the sides episodes from her life, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi. On so small a surface van der Weyden fits an entire church front. The gold cloth of honour behind her is held up by two hovering angels.