La Glorification de la Vierge

This is a very small panel, and Geertgen tot Sint Jans filled it with sound you cannot hear. The Virgin and Child float inside a glory of golden rays, and ringed all around them are dozens of small angels playing instruments, lutes, harps, bells, and portable organs, set out in circles like a living diagram of the heavens. Painters in the Low Countries around 1490 were drawn to the old idea that the cosmos itself made music, and here that idea becomes something you can almost count, ring by ring. At the center the Christ Child turns toward his mother. The panel is small enough to cradle in two hands, made to be studied up close, one circle of angels at a time.