Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Barbara

Hans Memling's Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Barbara, painted in 1479 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a refined sacra conversazione showing the mystical marriage of Saint Catherine. Memling, born in Seligenstadt in Germany, became the most successful painter in Bruges after the deaths of Van Eyck and Petrus Christus. His sweetly serene Madonnas and elegant female saints made him enormously popular with the international merchant community in Bruges.

Memling's refined technique features smooth, porcelain-like flesh tones, delicate modeling, and a sweetness of expression that distinguished his devotional paintings, set within carefully rendered domestic interiors or gentle landscape backgrounds.