Virgin and Child

The Virgin is portrayed beneath an arch and the Child sits on an oriental carpet laid over a parapet, creating the visual effect of a “window” and establishing a link between the sacred field of the representation and the profane space of the observer.

The only painting in Portugal by the great master from Bruges, this may be a panel from a diptych, in which the image of the donor would be displayed on the right in an attitude of veneration, in keeping with a style of painting that was very much in fashion in late 15th-century Flemish painting and which Memling himself adopted in one of his most famous works, the diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhoven (Sint-Jan Hospitaalmuseum, Bruges), where the representation of the Virgin and Child is in fact very similar to the one seen in this panel.