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This painting may have been the left wing of a diptych, the Child's attention having been fixed on a donor in the right wing. It was suggested - not convincingly - that the Portrait of a Monk in the Louvre, which has approximately the same size, formed the right wing.
Both the Virgin and the Child bear some resemblance to their counterparts in Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna, particularly in the sweet but somber countenance of the Virgin and the twisted torso of the Child. Michelangelo's sculpture was sent in 1506 to Bruges, where Gossart must have seen it.
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