ABSTRACT
This essay is a study of devotional competency in early Netherlandish art, especially as it pertains to double portraits of women and men. My aim is to indicate ways in which competency before the devotional image took forms very different from those the modern viewer might expect, and to demonstrate that it was ascribed to people in ways that were actually quite interesting and subtle. Specifically, I will shed light on an important coordination of spiritual primacy that took place among men and women.
