Adriaen Isenbrandt - Professional Life

Professional Life

Along with Albert Cornelis (before 1513-1531) and Ambrosius Benson (before 1518-1550), a painter from Lombardy, he worked in the workshop of Bruges' leading painter Gerard David, while he was already a master at that time. Isenbrandt is mentioned in the book De Brugensibus eruditionis fama claris libri duo of the priest Antonius Sanderus, published in Amsterdam in 1624. This writer refers to texts of the Florentine Lodovico Guicciardini, the Schilderboeck of Karel van Mander and the (lost) notes of the Ghent jurist Dionysius Hardwijn (or Harduinus, 1530–1604). The latter, who had spent several years in Bruges about 1550, mentions Isenbrandt as a disciple of the old Gerard David, who excelled "in nudes and in portraits". He may have travelled to Genoa in 1511 together with Joachim Patinir and Gerard David. The influence of Gerard David shows clearly in the composition and the landscape background of the works attributed to Isenbrandt.

In his critical exhibition catalogue of Early Flemish Masters in Bruges in 1902, the Ghent great connoisseur of early Flemish Art and art historian Georges Hulin de Loo, came to the conclusion that Isenbrandt was actually the anonymous Master of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin and the author of a large body of paintings previously attributed to Gerard David and Jan Mostaert by the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen. He is therefore sometimes called the Pseudo-Mostaert. Even if this attribution to Isenbrandt cannot be proven without doubt, it is now generally accepted by some art historians, although many others regard Isenbrandt as a convenient label for a body of work by many different artists.

No surviving painting can be firmly documented as by Isenbrandt. A document stating that he sent some paintings from Antwerp to Spain shows that worked for export as well as the local market, and suggests his international reputation. Two paintings usually associated with him are dated, both in 1518 :

• Portrait of Paulus de Nigro (Groeninge Museum, Bruges) (1518)
• The Bröhmse triptych with the Adoration by the Magi. This was his most monumental work, but it was destroyed in 1942 when the Marienkirche in Lübeck was bombed. For Walter Friedlander, this was the key work to be used in establishing his style.

One of his first paintings (c. 1518–1521) was the “Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, adored by the family Van de Velde”, a diptych that can be seen in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges and its left panel in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

It was common practice for major artists, such as Isenbrandt, to paint only the major parts of his paintings, such as faces and the flesh parts of his figures. His faces and flesh areas are set apart by brown pigment. The background was then filled in by assistants. The end quality of a work depended largely on the quality of the execution and the competency of the assistants, leading to an uneven quality of his works. These assistants also painted, as this was common practice in those times, many versions of the “Madonna and Child”, that were then attributed to Isenbrandt, giving him the reputation of having had an enormous body of work. The exhibition in Bruges of Early Netherlandish painting in 1902 showed therefore a large collection of his works. Unlike many contemporary colleagues, he is only documented with one assistant, Cornelis van Callenberghe, who joined his workshop in 1520.

In 1520 he worked, together with Albert Cornelis and Lanceloot Blondeel, on the decorations for the Triumphal Entry of Emperor Charles V into Bruges.

His paintings are executed meticulously and with great refinement. His figures are painted in warmer tones and more lively colours, than the works of Gerard David. Especially the flaming red or the dark blue set against an idyllic background of a lush, hilly landscape with castles situated on top of a vertical rock (typical for Isenbrandt), sinuous rivers and thick-leaved trees (showing the influence of Gerard David). He not only copied the compositions of Gerard David, but also from older painters such as Jan Van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes and Hans Memling. He borrowed compositions from Jan Gossaert (leading to the confusion with this painter) and drawings from Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schongauer. Such borrowing from older compositions was the order of the day and common practice. Nevertheless the paintings of Adriaen Isenbrandt retain their individuality.

He also painted some portraits, such as the portrait of Paulus de Nigro ( ), “Man weighing gold” (1515–1520) ( ) and “Young Man with a Rosary” ( ). These portraits, even if they are stereotypical and lifeless, are executed with a soft touch and sfumato effect in the contours.

The influence of the Italian Renaissance can be seen in the detailed addition of fashionable scenery elements such as volutes, antique pillars and ram’s heads, such as in his painting of the “Mass of Saint Gregory the Great” ( ). and “Mary and Child” (1520–1530) ( ). Through these elements he may be regarded as a precursor of the Renaissance painter Lanceloot Blondeel.

He is often related with Ambrosius Benson (c. 1495–1550), a painter from Lombardy who emigrated to Bruges. He may have introduced the sfumato technique to Isenbrandt.

Together with Benson, Isenbrandt belongs to a generation overlapping and succeeding the generation of Gerard David and Jan Provoost.