The Virgin in the Sun

Most Virgo in Sole images to have survived from the late Middle Ages are either sculpted images intended for liturgical use in large church buildings, or inexpensive prints of the type that could be mass-produced, circulated widely, and carried about the person. This remarkable survival is one of a tiny handful of panel paintings depicting the Virgo in Sole that are known to have come down to us from the period. As a document of late-Medieval devotional practice and a record of Flemish panel painting in the closing years of the fifteenth century, it could hardly be more significant.