The story
On an ordinary weekday in the 1480s, anyone in the church of the Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges saw only the outside of its high altarpiece. Painted on the closed wings were four kneeling figures, two brothers and two sisters of the hospital, the people who ran the house and who had ordered the work from Hans Memling, the German-born painter settled in Bruges. On feast days the wings opened onto the St John Altarpiece in full colour, finished in 1479, with the two Saints John, the Baptist and the Evangelist, beside the enthroned Virgin and Child.
The hospital is far older than the painting. It took in pilgrims, travellers and the sick from the 12th century and kept working as a hospital until 1977, when its patients moved to a modern building elsewhere in the city. The medieval wards and the church then became a museum, so the altarpiece is shown in the same building it was painted for.
Beyond it, the visitor finds two smaller triptychs ordered by brothers of the house, Jan Floreins and Adriaan Reins, each with its donor painted in at prayer. Nearby is the diptych Memling made in 1487 for Maarten van Nieuwenhove, a young Bruges patrician, with the Virgin on one panel and Maarten on the other, and an inscription giving his age as 23.
