"Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin"

Saint Luke is compositionally very similar to Jan van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (c. 1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris), which was completed in virtually the same period. Presumably, Van der Weyden could have seen Van Eyck's panel in Bruges, before it was sent to Autun in Burgundy, Chancellor Rolin's hometown. Both scenes take place in similarly elegant rooms with tiled floors, tripartite doorways, and two background figures observing a river view. The similarities point to both the inspiration that Rogier seems to have drawn from Van Eyck's work and the innumerable variations he introduced to arrive at his own original composition. 

The probable initial location of Van der Weyden's painting in the Brussels painters' guildhouse, or in their chapel in the Cathedral of Saint Gudule (where Van der Weyden was later buried) may account for the three close copies of the work (now in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg; the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; and the Groenigemuseum, Bruges) that were made in later decades, as well as numerous repetitions or interpretations of individual figures, particularly that of the Madonna and Child.