Memling's work was particularly popular with members of the large Italian community in Bruges.
Tommaso Portinari, manager of the Medici bank in Bruges, married Maria Baroncelli in 1470 and commissioned this pair of portraits of himself and his wife. They were originally the wings of a triptych.
Portinari also commissioned Hugo van der Goes to paint the Portinari Altarpiece.

The work was commissioned by Angelo di Jacopo Tani, the Florentine manager of the Medici bank in London, for the altar of his newly founded Chapel of St Michael in Cosimo de'Medici's church of the Badia Fiesolana.
The commission coincided with Tani's wedding in 1466 to Caterina Tanagli, with whom he is portrayed on the closed wings. Their escutcheons are mounted on the polygonal base of the niches.
St Michael appears as the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated. Taken together, the grisailles depict the victory of St Michael over Satan, who was threatening the Virgin and Christ Child.
The painting was completed before the birth of the couple's first daughter in 1471, and was dispatched to the port of Pisa from Southampton in 1473. The ship was intercepted by a Polish warship operating on behalf of the Hanseatic League and the painting was taken to Danzig (Gdansk), where it was to remain.

A perfectly symmetrical, semi-circular line of bodies runs through the continuous space of all three panels, with the calm upward movement of the Reception of the Righteous into Heaven balanced by the turbulent Casting of the Damned into Hell on the opposite side.
In the centre, Christ appears in evangelical guise seated on a rainbow, his feet resting on a gleaming golden globe, surrounded by the twelve apostles and the intercessors Mary and John the Baptist. The figure of St Michael stands on the earth directly below Christ.
Holding the scales in his right hand, he uses the crosier in his left to prick the flesh of the damned soul.
On the left, St Peter leads the small band of righteous souls to the gates of paradise. Several of the male redeemed souls have clearly personalised features, suggesting that acquaintances of Angelo Tani had their portraits included.
No such figures appear amongst the damned on the right. After weighing and judgement, the majority of the resurrected are herded towards hell by demons.

The central panel of the triptych depicts the Virgin and Child in a landscape. The left wing represents St Benedict, while the right wing contains a portrait of the donor, Benedetto di Tommaso Portinari.
The work was made for the hospice of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, which was founded by the Portinari family. The donor was Tommaso Portinari's nephew.

The panel belonged to a Dominican monk called Benedetto Pagagnotti. Fra Bartolomeo faithfully copied the background of the picture for his Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (Metropolitan Museum - black and white (meanies)), painted in 1497.
Memling's treatment of light was much admired in Florence. The Mill of Christ is represented by the mill in the background.

Another version of this painting is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Both tondos are roughly the same size and their composition is probably based on a lost tondo by the Master of Flémalle with the same dimensions.
There is a whole series of versions of roughly the same type and format, with the Virgin sometimes facing to the left and sometimes to the right, which suggests the use of cartoons or tracings.