Christ Giving His Blessing

The blessing type, in a Netherlandish panel

A blessing Christ shown frontally, at half length or less, is a devotional formula rather than a scene. Fifteenth-century Netherlandish workshops produced the type in quantity and at small scale, often as one wing of a pair or a triptych, with the raised hand and the direct gaze doing all the work. Nine titles in this catalogue turn on blessing.

Its relation to the narrative

It stands outside it. There is no chapter to cite and no moment to place it after. The distinction is worth keeping: an episode picture asks to be read in sequence with others, while an image of this kind asks only to be looked at, and it was hung accordingly — in a chamber, above a bed, or inside a folding frame that closed.

The record

The catalogue gives Hans Memling, 1478, and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The dimensions are 38 by 28 centimetres, upright and very small, which is consistent with the type. The style is entered as Northern Renaissance and the artist as Flemish; the subject fields class the work as a portrait and as a male figure. The measured palette reads as red. Eight works in this catalogue are attributed to Memling. The record says nothing about whether the panel once belonged to a larger structure, so nothing is claimed.