Vierge en majesté à l'Enfant avec un ange

Memling made devotional panels like this in Bruges in the 1480s, when that Flemish city was one of the busiest trading ports in Europe. Italian bankers, Spanish merchants and foreign agents all kept houses there, and many of them wanted small, richly finished pictures of the Virgin to pray before at home. Memling ran a large workshop to feed that demand and grew prosperous doing it. He had trained in the tradition of Rogier van der Weyden, a leading Netherlandish master, but softened its sharp drama into this calm, even sweetness. The throne, the fall of the heavy drapery, the jewel-like colour, all of it was built to reward slow, close looking by candlelight.