Virgin and Child
Sizes
About this painting
Bouts took the Byzantine icon of the tender Virgin — cheek pressed to cheek, the glykophilousa — and then removed the two things that made it an icon. No gold ground. No halo. What carries the holiness is flesh: the weight of the child, the pressure of a cheek, skin modelled until it seems to breathe. The panel is eight and a half inches high. It was made to be held close, by one person praying alone.
Sources: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 'Virgin and Child', accession 30.95.280; read 2026-08-27.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 3,846 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.