Portrait of a Donor (recto); Saint Anthony of Padua (verso)

c. 1485

Hans Memling (Netherlandish, c. 1430–1494)

This panel and Virgin and Child once hinged together to form a diptych, with the Virgin and Child on the left and the portrait of a man facing her on the right. The condition of the portrait is very poor, while its reverse—featuring an image of Saint Anthony of Padua—is well preserved. It is painted in grisaille, a technique that mimics sculpture through monochromatic shades of beige and gray. This outer panel would have been visible when the diptych was closed and served as a transition point between the earthly setting outside the diptych into the sacred space within, painted in colorful, lavish detail. Visual cues like Anthony’s sandaled toe stepping on the edge of the frame and the reflection of two children—perhaps the donor’s—in the convex mirror behind the Virgin reinforce the paintings’ role as an intermediary meeting point reached through prayer.

Status: On View, Gallery 202
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Hans Memling
Title: Portrait of a Donor (recto); Saint Anthony of Padua (verso)
Place: Netherlands (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1480–1490
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: Framed: 41.3 × 33.3 cm (16 5/16 × 13 1/8 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Arthur Sachs
Reference Number: 1953.467
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/79777/manifest.json

Julius Held, “A Diptych by Memling,” Burlington Magazine 68 (1936), pp. 176–79, pls. A–B.
“Memling’s Madonna,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 35 (1941), p. 116 (ill. 1953.467; cover, ill. 1933.1050).
Thomas Bodkin, Dismembered Masterpieces: A Plea for Their Reconstruction by International Action, London, 1945, p. 29.
The Art Institute of Chicago, A Picture Book: Masterpieces of Painting, XV and XVI Centuries in the Collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, 1946, pp. 6–8 (ill. 1933.1050).
“The Face of Christ: A Portfolio of His Image through the Ages,” Fortune 33, 1 (1946), p. 143 (ill. 1933.1050).
Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger, A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1947, p. 71.
Helen Parker, The Christmas Story: Illustrated from the Collections of the Art
Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1949, n.pag. (ill.).
“A Tour of the World of Art in 150 Masterpieces,” Masterpieces 1 (1950), p. 50.
Charles Fabens Kelley, “Chicago: Record Years,” Art News 51, 4 (1952), p. 107.
Heinrich Schwarz, “The Mirror in Art,” Art Quarterly 15 (1952), p. 100.
Leo van Puyvelde, La Peinture flamande au siècle des Van Eyck, Paris and New York, 1953, p. 266.
Helen Comstock, “A Memling Diptych Reunited,” Connoisseur 134 (1954), p. 73 (ill.).
Heinrich Schwarz, “The Mirror of the Artist and the Mirror of the Devout: Observations on Some Paintings, Drawings and Prints of the Fifteenth Century,” in Studies in the History of Art Dedicated to William E. Suida on His Eightieth Birthday, London, 1959, pp. 99–100.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, 1961, pp. 144–45 (ill.), 309–10.
Roger van Schoute, La Chapelle royale de Grenade, Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux au quinzième siècle, 6, Brussels, 1963, p. 75.
Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting, Åbo, 1965 (repr., Doornspijk, 1984), p. 46; 2nd ed., 1984, p. 46 n. 36.
Frederick A. Sweet, “Great Chicago Collectors,” Apollo 84 (1966), pp. 198–99, fig. 24 (1933.1050).
Maria Corti and Giorgio T. Faggin, L’opera completa di Memling, Milan,
1969, no. 28a–c.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago, London, 1970, pp. 28–29 (ill.), 283.
Jacques Vilain, “L’Autoportrait caché dans la peinture flamande du XVe siècle,”
Revue de l’art, no. 8 (1970), pp. 53, 55 n. 12.
Max J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei; rev. English ed., Early Netherlandish Painting, Brussels and Leiden, 1971, pp. 52, 56, nos. 50, 92, pl. 98.
Jan Bia_ostocki, “Man and Mirror in Painting: Reality and Transience,” in Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John Plummer, vol. 1, New York, 1977, p. 65.
Jane B. Friedman, “An Iconological Examination of the Half-Length Devotional Portrait Diptych in the Netherlands, 1460–1530,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1977, pp. 106–07, 113–15, fig. 25.
The Art Institute of Chicago, 100 Masterpieces, 1978, pp. 44–45, no. 8.
Vida Joyce Hull, “Hans Memling’s Paintings for the Hospital of Saint John in Bruges,” Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1979 (New York, 1981), p. 219.
John D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America, New York, 1979, p. 198.
Susanne Bäumler, “Studien zum Adorationsdiptychon: Entstehung, Fru_hgeschichte und Entwicklung eines privaten Andachtsbildes mit Adorantendarstellung,” Ph.D. diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 1983, pp. 52, 75, 169–71, cat. 12.
Larry Silver, The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné, Montclair, N.J., 1984, p. 181, pl. 137.
Ingrid Verhoeven, “De chronologie der portretten van Hans Memling,” M.A. thesis, Licentieverhandeling, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1984–85, pp. 115–18, figs. 61–62.
Larry Silver, “The ‘Gothic’ Gossaert: Native and Traditional Elements in a Mabuse Madonna,” Pantheon 45 (1987), pp. 62–63, fig. 14.
Marion Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine: Studien zur niederländischen Grisaillemalerei des 15. und fru_hen 16. Jahrhunderts, Cologne, 1988, pp. 234–36.
Edwin Buijsen, “The Iconography of St. Antony of Padua in Flemish Art up to the Counter-Reformation,” Santo 29 (1989), pp. 6–7, fig. 4.
Colin Eisler, Early Netherlandish Painting: ‘The Thyssen-
Bornemisza Collection, London, 1989, p. 111, fig. 6.
Martha Wolff, “An Image of Compassion: Dieric Bouts’s ‘Sorrowing Madonna,’” AIC Museum Studies 15 (1989), pp. 116–17.
Angelica Dülberg, Privatporträts: Geschichte und Ikonologie einer Gattung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1990, pp. 69 n. 391, 164, 259, no. 236, pl. 148.
Guy Bauman and Walter A. Liedtke, Flemish Paintings in America: A Survey of Early Netherlandish and Flemish Paintings in the Public Collections of North America, Antwerp, 1992 , p. 352, nos. 344a–b.
Dirk de Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works, Antwerp and Ghent, 1994, pp. 220–21, 380, no. 55.
Charles H. Duncan, “Mirrors and Reflections in Early Netherlandish Painting,” M.A. thesis, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1994, pp. 57–64.
Laura Deborah Gelfand, “Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Devotional Portrait Diptychs: Origins and Function,” Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1994, pp. 107–11.
Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, “De opdrachtgevers van Hans Memling,” in Hans Memling: Essays, ed. Dirk de Vos, Bruges, 1994, p. 27 n. 112.
Barbara M. Thiemann, Hans Memling: Ein Beiträg zum Verständnis seiner Gestaltungsprinzipien, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1994, pp. 153–54.
Paul Mitchell and Lynn Roberts, “Frame,” in Dictionary of Art, vol. 11, 1996, pp. 439–40.
Barbara G. Lane, “The Question of Memling’s Training,” in Memling Studies: Proceedings of the International Colloquium (Bruges, 10–12 November, 1994), ed. Hélène Verougstraete, Roger van Schoute, and Maurits Smeyers, Leuven, 1997, pp. 53–70, fig. 6.
Hélène Verougstraete and Roger van Schoute, “Cadres et supports chez Memling,” in Memling Studies, p. 272, fig. 1.
Laura D. Gelfand, “Devotion, Imitation, and Social Aspirations: Fifteenth-Century Bruges and a Memling School Madonna and Child,” Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 5 (2000), p. 13.
Till-Holger Borchert, Lorne Campbell, Paula Nuttall, et al., Memling and the Art of Portraiture, exh. cat., Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2005, pp. 52, 57, 70–72, 142, 175, figs. 57–58, pl. 27.
Andrea Pearson, Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350–1530: Experience, Authority, Resistance, Aldershot and Burlington, Vt., 2005, p. 197, no. 15.
Susan Frances Jones in Martha Wolff et al., Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2008, pp. 250-59, ill.

Art Institute of Chicago, The Christmas Story in Art, 1938–39 (no cat.).
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art of the Edge: European Picture Frames, 1300–1900, 1986, no. 34.

Linker, Bilbao, 1927 [Friedländer annotated a photograph now at the R.K.D., The Hague Linker / Bilbao / III 1928 / nach Restaur[ierung]]. Hugo Perls, Berlin, 1928 [according to Friedländer’s annotations to another photograph at the R.K.D., The Hague]; sold to Arthur Sachs, New York, 1929 [letter from Friedländer to Arthur Sachs, Mar. 16, 1951, and letter from Sachs to Waltraut van der Rohe, Mar. 2, 1957; both in curatorial file]; given to the Art Institute, 1953.

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Portrait of a Donor (recto); Saint Anthony of Padua (verso)

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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