Madonna with child on her Lap

This Madonna with Child from 1470, attributed to Metsys but predating his birth by several years, raises immediate questions of authorship. If the date is correct, the painting cannot be by Metsys, who was born around 1466 and would have been only four years old. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium catalogues it under his name, but it likely represents either an earlier master whose work influenced Metsys or a dating error in the museum records.

The style is consistent with mid-to-late fifteenth-century Netherlandish devotional painting, with careful modeling and a traditional gold-ground setting. The technique predates Metsys’s documented manner.