MEMLING, Hans
(b. ca. 1440, Seligenstadt, d. 1494, Bruges)

Maria Maddalena Baroncelli

c. 1470
Oil on wood, 44 x 34 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This painting is the pendant of the portrait of the sitter's husband, Tommaso Portinari. Both paintings probably belonged to a triptych as the side wings.

It was Memling's clever innovation to place the trompe-l'oeil frame not around but behind the sitter, which caused the sitter to be projected into the viewer's space.