Virgin and Child Enthroned

1510 · Private collection

religious

This painting was discovered in 1989 and attributed to Isenbrant. It was carefully copied, albeit in a different style, from Memling's Berlin Virgin Enthroned. The figure has been copied from Memling's work by means of a punch-cardboard and the colours also correspond, which shows that the work was then still accessible in Bruges.

About the Artist

Adriaen Isenbrant

1490 – 1551

Netherlandish painter. He became a master in Bruges in 1510 and is said by an early source to have been a pupil of Gerard David. Otherwise, virtually nothing is known of him and there are no signed or documented works. However, in 1902 the Belgian art historian Georges Hulin de Loo proposed Isenbrandt as the author of a large group of paintings deriving from David, and the identification has generally been accepted. Previously the paintings had been attributed to Jan Mostaert and the anonymous Master of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, named after a diptych of the subject divided between the church of Notre-Dame in Bruges and the Musées Royaux in Brussels. Because of the uncertainty, some authorities prefer to use the name Isenbrandt in inverted commas.

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