Two attendants and a throne

An enthroned Virgin with two angels is a hierarchy diagram before it is a picture. The throne establishes rank; the number two establishes symmetry; the absence of names establishes that the attendants are interchangeable. The formula is old and remarkably stable, and this catalogue contains enough instances of it to make the pattern legible without leaving the record.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1490 and gives Hans Memling, a Flemish painter, with Northern Renaissance as the style term. The recorded dimensions are 68.2 x 51.5 cm. The measured colour families are brown and red. No location is recorded.

The largest single group here

Thirteen of the 224 works in this catalogue are by this painter, more than by any other hand — the next largest group is eight. That concentration is a fact about how the collection was assembled rather than a judgement about the painter, and it means the formulaic entries and the unusual ones can be compared within one body of work. No location is recorded for this panel.