芭芭拉·范·弗兰登贝赫肖像

In Bruges around 1480 Hans Memling was the portraitist the city's rich merchants went to, and Barbara van Vlaendenbergh was married to one of the richest, Willem Moreel, a banker who twice served as the town's burgomaster. Memling painted the couple as a pair, husband and wife on separate panels that once flanked a central religious image, so the pious donors seemed to kneel before it. Barbara is shown half-length before a distant landscape, in a purple gown and a veiled headdress, her hands joined in prayer and jewelled rings on her fingers. A few years later, in 1484, the same couple commissioned Memling's large Moreel Triptych, in which their many children kneel in rows behind them.