Diptyque de Philippe de Croÿ avec la Vierge à l'Enfant

This panel is only half of a picture. Rogier van der Weyden painted it around 1460 as one wing of a small folding diptych. On the other side knelt Philip de Croy, a Burgundian nobleman and chamberlain to the duke, his hands pressed in prayer and his eyes turned toward this Virgin and Child so the two panels spoke to each other across the hinge. At some unknown point the diptych was broken apart, and the halves drifted into different collections. Today the praying Philip hangs in Antwerp, while Mary and the restless infant, who tugs at the clasp of a prayer book, are here in California. Van der Weyden helped invent this kind of pairing, a living donor on one wing praying across to a sacred figure on the other.