Madonna and Child with the lamb.

This Madonna and Child with a lamb from 1513, now in the National Museum in Poznań, introduces a pastoral element to the devotional composition—the lamb both a realistic detail and a symbol of Christ’s sacrificial destiny. Metsys’s treatment of the subject recalls Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and a lamb, reflecting the Italian influence that increasingly shaped Antwerp painting through prints and copies. Metsys's religious paintings combine the Flemish tradition of meticulous naturalism with compositional ideas absorbed from Italian Renaissance models.

The lamb’s woolly texture is rendered with the descriptive precision of a Netherlandish still life painter, while the Madonna’s face shows the soft, sfumato modeling that marks Metsys’s Italianate phase.