Memling's religious works often incorporated donor portraits of the clergymen, aristocrats, and burghers (bankers, merchants, and politicians) who were his patrons.

Born in Seligenstadt,[2] near Frankfurt in the Middle Main region, Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne and later worked in the Low Countries under Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1455–1460) in Brussels, Duchy of Brabant.

The Last Judgment was commissioned by Angelo Tani, erstwhile director of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank, for a chapel at what is now the Badia Fiesolana in Fiesole.

The inventories of Margaret of Austria, drawn up in 1524, allude to a triptych of the God of Pity by Rogier van der Weyden, of which the wings containing angels were painted by "Master Hans".

[8] Other paintings include the Madonna and Saints (which passed from the Duchatel collection to the Louvre), the Virgin and Child (painted for Sir John Donne and now at the National Gallery, London), and the four attributed portraits in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence (including the Portrait of Folco Portinari), the Scenes from the Passion of Christ in the Galleria Sabauda of Turin and the Advent and Triumph of Christ Around 1492, Memling was commissioned to paint the Najera Altarpiece for the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Maria la Real in Najera, Rioja, Spain.

The altarpiece, which was completed in Flanders, consisted of an image of God surrounded by angels playing a variety of musical instruments while atop a row of clouds before a golden background.

Recent scholarship by Bart Fransen has determined that Gonzalo de Cabredo and Abbot Pablo Martinez commissioned the creation of this artwork.

[1][9] Memling became sufficiently prosperous that his name appears on a list of the 875 richest citizens of Bruges who were obligatory subscribers to the loan raised by Maximilian I of Austria, to finance hostilities towards France in 1480.