Ritratto di una donna anziana

Around 1470 Bruges was one of the richest ports in northern Europe, and its merchant families wanted what wealth has always wanted, to be remembered. Memling was the town's most sought-after portraitist, and this is one of his quieter faces. An older woman in a dark gown and a tall white veil sits with her hands folded, set against a real landscape rather than the flat gold ground the north had used for so long. Portraits like this rarely hung alone. She was almost certainly made to face a portrait of her husband, the two panels forming a small hinged pair a family could open at home. Its companion, a portrait of an old man believed to be that husband, is now in Berlin, and the landscapes behind the two heads once lined up into a single continuous view.