St John Altarpiece (Memling) St John Altarpiece (Memling) The St John Altarpiece (sometimes the Triptych of the two Saints John or the Triptych of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist) is a large oil-on-oak hinged-triptych altarpiece completed around 1479 by the Early Netherlandish master painter Hans Memling. It was commissioned in the mid-1470s in Bruges for the Old St. John's Hospital ("Sint-Janshospitaal") during the building of a new apse. It is signed and dated 1479 on the original frame – its date of installation – and is today at the hospital in the Memling museum. The altarpiece consists of five paintings
Saint Peter Martyr Altarpiece testimony) also mention a second altarpiece by the artist in the same church, also dating to 1476, now known as the "Saint Peter Martyr Altarpiece"'. It is therefore theorised that the altarpieces were both dismantled during rebuilding of the church in 1776, then sold to the antiquarian Grossi who sold all the panels separately and grouped some of them into the altarpiece that Cardinal Zelada bought from him. Federico Zeri and Rodolfo Pallucchini then joined the altarpieces together, initially referring to the first (the high altarpiece), the "Pietà" in the Metropolitan Museum, and then to the "Madonna" in the Museum