Offered by Galerie Nicolas Lenté
16th to 18th century furniture, paintings and works of art
Virgin and Child
Workshop of Adriaen Isenbrant (1480–1551)
Bruges, 16th century
Oil on oak panel
Dimensions: h. 91 cm, w. 73 cm
Large ebonized and giltwood frame called “Carlo Maratta”, Italy, 17th century period
Framed: h. 120 cm, w. 101 cm
Our panel presents the Virgin and Jesus in a moving and intimate setting filled with love.
Mary, depicted half-length, tenderly embraces Jesus, who is standing on her thighs. The child presses his cheek against his mother's, and all the tenderness emanating from this embrace permeates our work.
The Virgin is dressed in a bright red dress and a cloak held by pearl clasps at her shoulders. Jesus, completely naked, is covered by a transparent veil. His white skin contrasts with the vermillion red of the Virgin's clothes.
Mary wears a turban that partially covers her long hair, which falls in curly locks on either side of her shoulders. Depicted in a pensive attitude, her eyes half-closed, she seems to be pondering her son's destiny. While the young child, his eyes open, looks at his mother with affection. Their faces pressed together, their lips advancing as if for a kiss.
The fabrics, artistically arranged in a multitude of broken folds, attract the eye with their intense red appearance, while the edges of the coat, embroidered with gold thread with scroll patterns and adorned with pearls, demonstrate the artist's particular attention to the details of the clothing.
A powerful light illuminates The Virgin and her son, making their flesh translucent.
Our painting is an exquisite work where the finesse of the lines, the play of light, the facial expressions attest to the artist's remarkable mastery and know-how. The painter succeeds in conveying the atmosphere of serenity and gentleness that reigns in this painting. The bright red and the translucent flesh clash to charge our work with an emotional force far beyond an aesthetic aspect.
Our work belongs to a group of similar paintings all based on a lost work by Rogier Van Der Weyden depicting the Virgin and Child, known today from a drawing preserved in the Dresden collection of prints and drawings. This composition, painted around the middle of the 15th century, through the proximity of the two protagonists humanizes the scene and increases its emotional power for the viewer, was, generally speaking, a novelty in Northern Europe in the 15th century.
This approach establishing the intimate bond between mother and child particularly inspired the artists of the Bruges school, who adapted Van der Weyden's composition. Art historians generally attribute the variants either to Adriaen Isenbrant and his students or to Ambrosius Benson and his sons.
Most versions known to date depict the two figures against a plain black background, which is thought to be associated with Adriaen Isenbrant, while those depicted against a landscape or rose garden are thought to belong to the brush of Ambrosius Benson and his workshop.
The plain black background facilitated a better contemplation of the work, preventing the eye from becoming distracted and lost in superficial details.
Related works:
• Provincial Museum of Zaragoza, Adrien Isenbrandt or Willem Benson, (black background) h. 90 cm, l. 60 cm, inv. 231
• Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, around 1550, Ambrosius Benson (black background), h. 92 cm, l. 76 cm, inv. CE0020P
• Auction, Dorotheum, Vienna, October 20, 2015, workshop of A. Benson (rose garden)
• Museum of Fine Arts of Budapest, around 1510, Adrien Isenbrandt (black background), h. 107 cm, l. 69 cm, inv. 5031
Curiously, a Roemer glass filled with tulips appears floating in the shadows of the black background. This bouquet was added in the 17th century by an anonymous artist. Given the popularity of tulips and the craze for still lifes, this is a kind of offering to the Virgin in the form of a painted bouquet.
Adriaen Isenbrant (between 1480 and 1490 - July 1551, Bruges)
The name of Adriaen Isenbrant remains, among those of the Bruges artists of the 16th century, one of the most famous as well as one of the most mysterious. He represents, with Ambrosius Benson, the principal representative of the Bruges school of the first half of the century and yet concrete evidence of his life is lacking. We do not know of any signed works by him but his activity is attested by a rare production of which the examples were multiplied by a large workshop.
Trained in the workshop of Gerard David, he settled in Bruges where he obtained the right of citizenship in 1510. At the head of his workshop, he spread widely in Bruges, responding, it seems, to both public commissions (the decorative work for the Joyous Entry of Charles V) and private ones. Nourished primarily by the examples of his master, whose motifs he often borrows almost literally, his art also draws from beyond, from the art of Van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes or Memling.
His style, "deliberately pictorial" to use the words of Till-Holgert Borchert, is defined by a great softness of modeling, by a delicacy and precision in the execution of details, by delicate and typical faces.
