Painting by Hans Memling
Portrait of Tommaso Portinari by Hans Memling is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. It was made c.1470 in oil on oak panel, and measures . The painting and Memling's "Portrait of Maria Portinari" form the wings from a since dismantled triptych; the central panel is believed to have been a now lost depiction of the Madonna and Child; perhaps Memling's "Virgin and Child" in the National Gallery, London.
Background.
Tommaso Portinari was a Florentine sent to Bruges c.1440 to work in the local branch of the Medici bank. He rose to become the manager of the branch c.1465. Portinari was a patron of Hugo van der Goes, who painted the "Portinari Altarpiece", and also of Hans Memling. The triptych was probably commissioned in 1470 to celebrate Portinari's wedding to Maria, for their private religious devotions at their ostentatious home in Bruges at Bladelinhof.
Tommaso represented the Medici bank in Bruges, but after a promising early career made a number of risky, unsecured loans to Charles the Bold which eventually led to the branch's insolvency. The couple returned to Florence in 1497, but Tommaso died young.
Description.
The work is a three-quarter half-length portrait of Portinari, who is turned to his right, and set against a dark background. He wears a black cape, from which the collar and sleeves of a dark robe protrude, typical garments of the upper middle class of the time. His hands are clasped as if praying, with his elbows resting on a parapet at or just below the lower edge of the frame. Underdrawing shows that Memling changed the position of Tommaso's hands to make them less vertical.
Tommaso's son Francesco Portinari bequeathed the work to Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in 1544, when it was described as "unum tabernaculettum que clauditur with tribus sportellis, in this est depicta imago Gloriossime virginis Marie et patris et matris dicti testatoris" ("a small tabernacle with three hinged panels, in which are painted the images of the most glorious Virgin Mary and of the testator's father and mother"). It remained at the Hospital until the Napoleonic times, and was later in the Demidoff collection. It is not clear when the central panel was separated from its two wings.
The Tommaso and Maria Portinari panels were sold, with an attribution to Dieric Bouts, in 1870 for 6,000 francs. They were acquired in Rome c.1900 by Elia Volpi, then in 1901 passed through the hands of Thomas Agnew &amp; Sons in London and to Léopold Goldschmidt in Paris. They were included in the important "Primitifs flamands" exhibition in Bruges in 1902. In 1910 the panels was sold by Kleinberger to Benjamin Altman for $426,500; he left them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on his death in 1913.
Notes.
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