Isenbrant, Adriaen

?, ca 1485 - Bruges, 1551

Other names

Ysenbrant / Ysenbrandt / Hysenbrandt

Biography

Painter sometimes referred to as the Pseudo-Mostaert, his complete work having been erroneously associated by Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1847) with that of Jan Mostaert. He is also known as the Master of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, after the subject of the diptych commissioned by Joris van de Velde for Notre-Dame in Bruges. It was Georges Hulin de Loo who first suggested that Isenbrant should be identified as the painter at the 1902 Bruges exhibition, a suggestion that was unanimously accepted by art historians. Later, some art historians suggested that he was Albert Cornelis. To date, all the works attributed to him have been based on stylistic criticism, none of them being authenticated by a signature or document.

The painter's place and date of birth are unknown, as is his initial artistic training. Although he was not originally from Bruges, where he spent most of his career, he was granted the city's bourgeoisie in 1510 and on 20 November of the same year became a member of the guild of Saint-Luc and Saint-Eloi. In its registers, he is described as a foreigner and says that he chose the profession of painter. He died in Bruges in 1551 in the house in Korte Vlaminckstraat that he had bought in 1536. He is recorded as "Adriaen Hysenbrandt scheildere" in the obituary of the gilde and is buried in the churchyard of Saint-Jacques.

Isenbrant married twice, first to Maria Grandeel and then to Clementine de Haerne in 1547. According to archive documents from 1516 to 1538, he held eleven successive offices in the guild, was a juror (vinder) nine times and treasurer (governor) twice. However, he never served as dean.

According to Antoine Sanderus and other seventeenth-century humanists, the painter "gifted in portraits and nudes" was a disciple of Gérard David, although there are no documents confirming his presence in his studio. Only the very strong stylistic link between his paintings and those of the Bruges master makes it plausible that he worked with him as a pupil or, more likely, as a collaborator. The professional relationship that existed between them is further confirmed by the appearance of his name in the judgement of the aldermen of Bruges of 11 February 1519, concerning the lawsuit between Gérard David and Ambrosius Benson. The latter claimed the return of a batch of models and drawings belonging to him, including various patterns that the former had had taken from the house of the painter Adriaen Isenbrant. The same document states that David maintained professional relations with other Bruges painters, in particular Adriaen Isenbrant and Albert Cornelis.

In 1520, Isenbrant took on Corneille van Callenberghe as an apprentice, which would mean that he left Gérard David to open his own workshop. That same year, he took part in the decorative work for the Joyous Entry of Charles V into Bruges. In 1545, the goldsmiths' guild commissioned a banner depicting Saint Eloi.

In view of the large quantity of work attributed to him, his workshop must have been highly productive and had many collaborators. This explains the heterogeneous nature of the corpus of works attributed to him and the differences in quality from one composition to another, depending on the models used. Several paintings are clearly the result of a collective effort, as evidenced by their scientific investigation. Isenbrant produced and sold a number of paintings inspired by David's repertoire, such as the Rest during the Flight into Egypt and the Nativity, notably on the Antwerp Pand. These subjects were very popular in Spain, where they were exported in large quantities.

Isenbrant was mainly a painter of religious subjects, most of which were inspired by the compositions of his illustrious predecessors such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes and Hans Memling, as well as contemporary Antwerp painters such as Jan Gossart and Joachim Patenier and Albrecht Dürer. His works are closely related to those of other Bruges painters such as Ambrosius Benson and Albert Cornelis, to the point of sometimes confusing their authorship. Lastly, they show affinities with the ornamental vocabulary of Lancelot Blondeel's paintings. The panels of the Virgin and Child, the Adoration of the Magi, Saint Jerome and the Rest during the Flight into Egypt play an essential role in Isenbrant's production of paintings, particularly small-format altarpieces for private devotion, responding to the demands of a pious public wishing to empathise with the sacred figures, as advocated by the Devotio Moderna.

The painter did not limit himself to this genre, however, executing numerous triptychs for both commissioners and the open market, as well as a number of monumental compositions such as the diptych of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, now dismembered. The panel showing the Virgin is preserved in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, and the panel showing the donor Joris van de Velde, Burgomaster of Bruges, and his family, in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. The Brömsen triptych of the Adoration of the Magi dated 1518 (St Mary's Cathedral, Lübeck) is another large-format painted altarpiece generally attributed to him, but which was unfortunately destroyed during the Second World War. There is also the astonishing triptych of Saint Pancraze (Church of Saint Pancraze, Genoa). The master also painted stand-alone portraits against neutral backgrounds or landscapes. These include the Portrait of Paul de Nigro (Groeningemuseum, Bruges), one of the few known dated paintings (1518), the Portrait of a Man Weighing Gold (The Metropolitan Museum, Friedsam collection, New York) and the many portraits of donors adorning the shutters of altarpieces. The figures adopt a dignified attitude, their expressions are barely individualised and they seem to be immersed in meditation.

Isenbrant's style is gentle and idyllic. His palette is warm and composed of subtle tones dominated by browns and gradations of greys and greens, unifying the compositions rather than punctuating them with bright colours (Adoration of the Magi, National Gallery of Art, Washington). Influenced by Italian art, Isenbrant innovated by introducing the sfumato technique inherited from Leonardo da Vinci into the treatment of skin tones. He diluted the contours, facilitating a fluid transition from shadow to light in a play of chiaroscuro specific to his compositions. The amber-coloured faces of the Virgin, whose morphology derives from those painted by David, are distinguished by this specific modelling process (Rest during the Flight into Egypt, (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).

Isenbrant's underlying drawing is free, combining linear lines and hatching planes, or produced with a poncif, a mechanical means of reproduction that was very common in Bruges and in particular in the studio of Gérard David and his followers. He used it in particular for architectural motifs inspired by the Italian Renaissance: ram heads, stylised foliage and candelabra motifs, which he incorporated into several of his paintings (Virgin and Child enthroned in a niche, Mauritshuis, The Hague and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In so doing, he contributed to the introduction into Flemish painting in the 16th century of an innovative repertoire of antique ornamentation, imported mainly from northern Italy.

In conclusion, the problem of attributing works to Isenbrant is a particularly delicate one. He was assisted by numerous collaborators in the execution of the majority of his works, and combined a variety of influences using models in the form of drawings, cartoons or engravings. In order to distinguish between the autographs and the contributions of the members of his vast workshop to the large group of works he has been given since the first nucleus formed by Max J. Friedländer, it is essential to use scientific methods of investigation. The chronology of his paintings, of which only three of those preserved have been dated, is just as difficult to establish and could usefully benefit from dendrochronological examinations. Renowned during his lifetime, Adriaen Isenbrant was a successful painter, winning acclaim for the "prettiness" of his paintings, which, in his gentle style, echoed the much-loved prototypes of the Bruges School. Faithful to tradition, he helped to disseminate "fashionable" compositions while renewing the ornamental vocabulary and developing a style and technique that in many ways heralded the paintings of the Renaissance.

Catheline Périer-D'Ieteren, 2014