Blessing Christ and Praying Virgin

Two figures, facing

The recorded title pairs a blessing Christ with a praying Virgin. That pairing is a convention rather than an event: the two half-length figures are set opposite one another, one giving and one receiving, and the arrangement carries a relationship instead of a moment. Panels of this kind were often made as two wings that close on each other, and the title's own structure — two subjects joined by an and — reflects that.

Its relation to the narrative

None directly. Mother and son appear together in many episodes, from the Nativity to the foot of the cross, but this subject holds them outside all of them, in the timeless register that devotional painting reserved for prayer. The gospels supply no scene in which the mother prays and the son blesses her.

The record

The catalogue names Robert Campin, dates the work to 1424, the earliest date of creation recorded anywhere in this catalogue, and places it in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, US. It measures 29 x 46 cm, small and horizontal, which is the shape two half-length figures side by side require. The style is entered as Northern Renaissance and the artist as Flemish; the subject fields class the work under male and female figures and as religious. The measured palette reads as orange and red.