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MASTER of Flémalle: Mérode Altarpiece

🖼 Mérode Altarpiece, c. 1427
Oil on wood
64.1 × 117.8 cm
New York, United States

Domestic intimacy suffuses this triptych's left panel, where Mary kneels in a bourgeois interior, awaiting the Annunciation rendered through miraculous light. The work revolutionized religious art by placing sacred drama in contemporary settings, establishing Flemish realism's spiritual power and influencing Northern European painting for generations.

The story of art
The story of art
E. H. Gombrich
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