Painted as a triptych, on the right wing was an old man in front of some wondering bystanders, burning incense to the Virgin, who is visible through an open window above a landscape in distant perspective with avenues undulating to the horizon; while a woman, her head dressed in a muffler that is almost a turban, touches the old man’s shoulder with one hand and raises the other with an indescribable gesture of surprise and joy, her face expressive of ecstasy.  On the left wing kneel the three Kings, their hands uplifted, their eyes raised to Heaven, contemplating an Infant beaming from the heart of a star; nothing can be more beautiful than these three transfigured faces; and these are praying with all their heart, never troubling themselves about us.

Still, these two divisions are but accessory to the central subject which they complement, and which is thus arranged: 

In the middle, in front of a sort of ruined palace or columnar cow-shed without a roof, the Virgin kneels in prayer before the Babe; to the right the donor, the Chevalier Bladelin, is seen, also kneeling, and on the left Saint Joseph, holding a lighted taper, gazes down on Jesus.  There are besides six little angels, three below at the door of the stable and three above in the air.  This is the whole scene.

It is noteworthy that the goldsmith’s work, the mingled splendour of Oriental hangings, the brocades hemmed with fur and strewn with gems of which Van Eyck and Memling made such free use to array their figures of the Virgin and the donors, are not to be seen in this panel.  The textures are rich and heavy, but have none of the gorgeous colouring of the silks of Bruges or the carpets of Persia.  Roger van der Weyden seems intentionally to have reduced the whole setting of the scene to its simplest expression, and yet, while using an unaffectedly sober key of colour, he has produced a masterpiece of pure and lucid harmony.

Mary, with no diadem, no jewelled band, not a bracelet or a gem, her head simply crowned by a few golden rays, is seen in a white dress, closed to the throat, and a blue cloak of which the ample folds lie on the ground; the sleeves of her under dress, fastened at the wrists, are of a rich blue violet, more nearly black than red.

Her face is indescribable; of superhuman loveliness, with long red-gold hair; the brow high, the nose straight, the lips full, the chin small; but words are of no avail; what cannot be described is the expression of candour and sadness, the tide of love that rises to those downcast eyes as she looks down on the tiny, helpless Babe, round whose head there is a rosy nimbus starred with gold.

Never was there a more unearthly and yet more living Virgin.  Neither Van Eyck, with his rather vulgar and never beautiful heads, nor Memling—­more tender and refined, no doubt, but limited to his ideal of a woman with a round forehead and a face shaped like a kite, wide above and pointed below—­ever achieved the elegance of form or the purity of a woman made divine by love, a being who, even apart from her surroundings and bereft of the attributes by which she is recognizable, could be none other than the Mother of God.