Diptyque de Maarten van Nieuwenhove

Maarten van Nieuwenhove was twenty-three when he had Memling paint this two-panel portrait in 1487, and the inscription along the bottom says exactly that, his name, the year, his age. He kneels on the right at his prayers. The Virgin and Child sit on the left. What Memling does that was new is treat both panels as one continuous room, the same window, the same light crossing between them, so the young man and the holy figures share a single space rather than facing each other across a gap. He drives the point home with a convex mirror on the wall behind Mary, and in its curved reflection you can find the backs of both figures, confirming they sit in the same room. It still keeps its original frame, and it still hangs in Bruges, where he commissioned it.