Virgin and Child

In the 1470s Bruges was one of the richest cities in northern Europe, a trading hub where Italian bankers and merchants kept houses, and Hans Memling was its most sought-after painter, wealthy enough to rank among the town's top taxpayers. Not everything he made was a grand altarpiece. This panel is tiny, barely 18 centimetres across, and it was meant for a private room rather than a church. It shows the Virgin nursing the Christ Child in close, quiet intimacy. Small devotional images like this often hung above a bed, a blessing over a married couple or a focus for daily prayer. The Christ Child feeding is an old sign of his true humanity, that he came into the world an ordinary infant. It reached New York in the 1930s from a private collection.