Portrait of Folco Portinari

Memling's Portrait of Folco Portinari from 1487 depicts the Florentine banking agent who managed the Medici bank's operations in Bruges — one of the most significant Florentine families in Bruges's commercial and artistic life. The Portinari family was central to the transmission of Flemish painting to Florence: Tomasso Portinari had commissioned Hugo van der Goes's great altarpiece (now the Portinari Triptych in the Uffizi) that transformed Florentine awareness of Flemish pictorial possibilities. Folco's portrait by Memling, painted eighteen years after Hugo's great altarpiece, documents the continuing connection between the Portinari family and Bruges's leading painters.

Memling renders the Italian banker with his characteristic precision and gentleness, using smooth flesh tones and a subdued palette that focuses attention on the sitter's individualized features.