A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or her, family. Donor portrait usually refers to the portrait or portraits of donors alone, as a section of a larger work, whereas votive portrait may often refer to a whole work of art intended as an ex-voto, including for example a Madonna, especially if the donor is very prominent. The terms are not used very consistently by art historians, as Angela Marisol Roberts points out, and may also be used for smaller religious subjects that were probably made to be retained by the commissioner rather than donated to a church.
This 15th-century Nativity by Rogier van der Weyden shows the fashionably dressed donor integrated into the main scene, the central panel of a triptych.
Male side panel of Hans Memling's Triptych of Wilhelm Moreel; the father is supported by his patron saint, with his five sons behind him. The central panel is here.
Female side of Memling's Triptych of Wilhelm Moreel, the mother, Barbara Van Hertsvelde is supported by her patron saint, with her eleven daughters behind her. The central panel is here.
13th-century frescoes from Milan: Madonna and Child, Saint Ambrose, and the donor Bonamico Taverna)
An altarpiece is an work of art in painting, sculpture or relief representing a religious subject made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, or a set of them, the word can also be used of the whole ensemble behind an altar, otherwise known as a reredos, including what is often an elaborate frame for the central image or images. Altarpieces were one of the most important products of Christian art especially from the late Middle Ages to the era of Baroque painting.
The Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, with its wings open. Considered one of the masterpieces of Early Netherlandish painting, a complex polyptych panel winged altarpiece, which lost its elaborate framework in the Reformation.
Ghent Altarpiece (1432), as above, closed view with the wings folded in.
Vigoroso da Siena's altarpiece from 1291, an example of an early painted panel altarpiece, with the individual parts framed by gables and sculptured elements
Rothenburg: The Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, by Tilman Riemenschneider (1501–1505). An example of an altarpiece with a central, sculpted section and relief wings.