La Vierge et l'Enfant avec quatre anges

Gerard David made this small panel in Bruges around 1510, when he was the city's leading painter and Bruges itself was slipping, its harbour silting up, its merchants drifting to Antwerp. He set the Virgin and Child not in a golden heaven but under a stone porch on the edge of the real, recognisable town. Look past them and the actual skyline of Bruges appears, the tall brick tower of the Church of Our Lady, the spire of Saint James's, and in the walled garden a Carthusian monk reading as he walks. That monk points to who it was likely made for, a charterhouse just outside the city walls. Two angels crown Mary while two more play instruments, the everyday city going about its business right behind the miracle.