What was probably broken up around the time of the Napoleonic occupation?
The panel has at various times been attributed to van der Goes and van Eyck, but was recognized as by Memling as early as the time of the seminal 1902 exhibition Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges in Bruges, when it was lent by Léopold Goldschmidt of Paris. In 1916 Max J. Friedländer described it as "without doubt" by Memling, and c. 1475. The art historian Catheline Périer-d'Ieteren, while noting that Memling's portrait faces were rarely underdrawn, wrote that this panel contains "thin yet confident incised lines" which may be preliminary drawings for Maria's face, perhaps made from life.
The triptych was recorded in an inventory of Tommaso's holdings upon his death. The New York panels passed through Tommaso's son Francesco. The central panel was described in his 1544 will as "a small tabernacle with three movable wings, in which is depicted the glorious Virgin Mary and the father and mother of the donor" (unum tabernaculettum que clauditur con tribus sportellis, in qua est depicta imago Gloriossime virginis Marie et patris et matris dicti testatoris). Francesco bequeathed the triptych to the convent of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Records indicate a small intact winged altarpiece which stayed in the hospital's possession until around the time of the Napoleonic occupation, when it was probably broken up.Maria's panel was sold as a Dieric Bouts for 6,000 francs in 1870. It later passed through several private collections before arriving in the possession of Elia Volpi of Rome, who briefly returned it to Florence. Thereafter the panels were in London from 1901, from where they were sold to Villeroy Goldschmidt of Paris by for $426,500 in 1910. They were purchased, also in 1910, by the collector Benjamin Altman of New York on the advice of Max Friedländer, along with works by Albrecht Dürer, Gerard David and Hans Holbein the Younger – paintings whose "grave austerity seems to have been most in tune with his own taste". Altman bequeathed his holdings to the Metropolitan on his death in 1913.
winged altarpiece