ADRIAEN ISENBRANT AND WORKSHOP 1480/90-1550
Christ on the cross, Circa 1520-1530
Oil on oak panel, 124 x 88,5 cm.
PROVENANCE
Christie's, London [Sir Miles Stapleton and other collections], 26 March 1926, lot 126 (as Barend van Orley), sold as a triptych, the wings with a donor and his family by a later hand;
There acquired by Frank T. Sabin, London, 1926;
Swen Boström, Stockholm, acquired in 1939 in London (without the later wings), until ca. 1954;
Auktionshaus Arnold, Frankfurt, 13 December 2008, lot 749;
There acquired by a private collection, Europe
LITERATURE
Max J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, vol. XI, Die Antwerpener Manieristen, Adriaen Ysenbrant, Berlin 1934, p. 133, no. 157 (as Adriaen Ysenbrant).
Max J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish painting, vol. XI, The Antwerp Mannersists, Adrian Ysenbrant, Leyden and Brussels 1974 (reprint), p. 84, no. 157, illustr. plate 124 (as Adriaen Ysenbrant).
Documented in the RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis as an fully autograph work by Adriaen Isenbrant: https://rkd.nl/images/44983.
On the basis of a high-resolution digital image, Dr Till-Holger Borchert, to whom I am grateful, has proposed an attribution to the Workshop of Isenbrant, dating the panel to after 1530.
Christ is shown on the Cross at the centre of the composition. Above the crossbeam is the titulus inscribed INRI (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum; "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews"). To his left stands the mourning Virgin Mary, her gaze lowered and her hands clasped in prayer; to his right is Saint John the Evangelist with his hands crossed over his chest. They are the only persons who remain beside the dead Christ. All the others have already departed and are making their way down the path from Mount Calvary. The Crucifixion is set against a panoramic landscape with dramatic rock formations, in which the artist has carefully rendered the architecture of the distant city of Jerusalem. In keeping with the Gospel accounts, the sky has darkened at the moment of Christ's death.
The composition is traditional in design and remarkable for its stillness. This may be explained by the panel's intended function as an image of devotion. It was conceived as an aid to meditation, inviting the faithful to contemplate Christ's sacrifice and the redemption won through his death on the Cross.
Isenbrant settled in Bruges in 1510 and was admitted as a Free Master in the Guild of Saint Luke in the same year. He appears to have enjoyed a long and successful career, spanning four decades until his death in 1551, by which time he had become a prominent and prosperous citizen. He directed a busy workshop that produced paintings for both the local market and the export trade, and he was elected Dean of the Guild of Saint Luke on nine occasions between 1516 and 1548, serving twice as its Governor, in 1526–27 and 1537–38.
Despite this, not a single signed or securely documented work by Isenbrant survives, and his oeuvre has therefore had to be reconstructed by art historians, most notably by Max J. Friedländer, whose studies in the 1930s defined his artistic personality and greatly expanded the corpus of works attributed to him. Friedländer himself employed the name Isenbrant as a designation for a larger body of paintings. Accordingly, works attributed to Isenbrant, including the present panel, are best understood as belonging to the broader "Isenbrant Group." The dominant stylistic influence on Isenbrant's work was undoubtedly that of his celebrated fellow townsman Gerard David (c. 1460–1523), the leading painter in Bruges at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It has often been suggested that Isenbrant may have trained with David or at least worked in his workshop, from whom he appears to have acquired his brilliant sense of colour.