Workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aalst, The Virgin and Child Enthroned

The panels of this small triptych are in their original frames, which are carved from the same boards as the panels. The gilding is relatively modern, although it covers traces of an older, perhaps original, gilding.

The central panel shows the Virgin Mary seated on an elaborate throne in a sort of loggia (open-sided gallery or room). On the left wing is an unidentified, possibly Cistercian, saint wearing a red mitre – he might be a mitred abbot, rather than a bishop; on the right is Saint Louis, who ruled France as Louis IX. Saints James the Great and Anthony of Padua appear on the back of the wings, painted in semi-grisaille – their draperies are monochrome but their flesh is naturally coloured.

The triptych seems to have been compiled from patterns available in the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aalst. The Virgin and Christ are a reduced version of a larger Virgin and Child (Kunstmuseum, Basel) and may have been reproduced, perhaps by tracing, from a drawing in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. The same figures are found, reversed, in a half-length Holy Family, of which many versions survive. The figures of Saints James and Anthony also recur in other paintings attributed to Coecke or his workshop.