Music-Making Angels (inv. 780)
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
The angels are vested, not costumed, in a mix of garments deacons, subdeacons and acolytes wear across the church year. Heaven is in orders, doing liturgy.
Soft strings and loud winds kept to separate worlds on earth, joined only for feast-day services; here a shawm and a folded trumpet sound beside a lute. Memling drew them so exactly that Puurs and Dutch makers rebuilt them for Oltremontano to play.
Gonzalo de Cabredo ordered it in 1483 and died in 1486 having paid a fraction of the cost. The angels' concert had its première on 19 August 2019, 536 years late.
Sources: Jeremy Montagu, "Musical Instruments in Hans Memling's Paintings," Early Music 35, no. 4 (2007): 505–524 · KMSKA, 'Musicerende engelen' (masterpiece page, Dutch) · KMSKA, room text Zaal Z37, p. 10 · "Hans Memling's Nájera altarpiece: new documentary evidence" · KMSKA, 'Memling's angelic concert' (Artists in Residence) · KMSKA, 'Music-making angels' (masterpiece page, English)
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 26,356 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.