Scènes de la Passion du Christ

Around 1470 an Italian banker named Tommaso Portinari, running the Medici branch in Bruges, commissioned this panel from Memling, and what he got was a whole city holding a whole story at once. Memling painted Jerusalem from above, its gates, streets and rooftops laid out like a map, and threaded 23 separate scenes of Christ's last days through it, from the entry into the city at the upper left down through the trial, the crucifixion, and the appearances after the Resurrection. You are meant to follow the path with your eye, moving building to building without losing your way, seeing beginning and end in a single glance. This kind of continuous narrative in one landscape was close to a new invention here. Portinari and his wife Maria kneel in the two front corners, small, watching the events they paid to have gathered. He is the same banker who ordered the great Portinari Altarpiece from Hugo van der Goes a few years later.