Diptych with the Virgin and Child and Three Donors

Diptych formats — two hinged panels — were among the most portable and personal formats of devotional art in the fifteenth century, small enough to be carried and personal enough to include donor portraits facing the holy image. This diptych from around 1486, now in Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts, places the Virgin and Child on one wing with three donor portraits on the other — a format that literally enacted the devotional relationship between patron and sacred image by placing them face-to-face across the hinge. The three donors likely represent a family group commissioning the object together.

The diptych format creates an implicit dialogue between sacred and secular wings, the donors' gazes directed across the hinge toward the Virgin. The master renders the donors with the individualised portrait precision typical of Flemish donor imagery.