聖ヨハネ祭壇画

Memling made this triptych in the 1470s for the place it still stands, the old Saint John's hospital in Bruges, and it was set on the altar in 1479 as a new apse went up. This was a working infirmary of around 240 beds, often two patients to a bed, and the sick could follow the services from where they lay, this painting in their line of sight. The centre shows the enthroned Virgin and Child among saints. The right wing opens onto the strangest passage, John the Evangelist alone on the island of Patmos, watching the visions of the Apocalypse unfold in the sky above him, riders and beasts and a burning sea. On the closed outer shutters kneel the hospital's own administrators beside their patron saints, the people who paid for it, kneeling where the patients could see them.