Virgin and Child in an Apse Copy after Robert Campin Netherlandish Next to Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin was one of the founders of early Netherlandish painting whose celebrated Merode Triptych is displayed at The Met Cloisters. Based on a lost original of about 1420, this picture is among the earliest of over sixty variants that attest to the burgeoning cult of the Virgin during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the Burgundian Netherlands. While the motif of the suckling Child lying in his mothers arms derives from the Byzantine icon type known as the galaktotrophousa, the music-making angels refer to liturgical celebration, evoking the numerous contemporary hymns which praised the Virgin.. Virgin and Child in an Apse 435838