Ambrosius Benson

Count de Lalaing, Castle Zandbergen, Belgium, before 1950.

The flat, stable support is composed of two vertical panels. The paint surface is secure and in good condition. The blue pigments of Mary’s robes are somewhat degraded and retouched. The faces and flesh tones of the figures are generally well preserved. Retouching work is evident to the naked eye in the darks of the background, along the outline of the figure of Mary and in the Christ child’s upper right thigh. These are confirmed under UV light, see catalogue illustration. Offered in a black and gilt wood frame in good condition.
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In 1518 Benson acquired Bruges citizenship, and in 1519 he was admitted to the Guild of painters and saddlemakers there as an independent master, with the comment that he was "from Lombardy". He may have been from Ferrara, although he was originally called Ambrogio Benzone, taking his first name from the patron saint of Milan, the capital of Lombardy. Initially he worked in the studio of Gerard David, by whom he was profoundly influenced, but after a few months the relationship went wrong and the younger painter brought a court case against David. Benson seems to have established himself successfully in Bruges within a few years of his stay, and there is plenty of evidence that his early success brought with it considerable affluence. 

The iconographical type of the Virgin feeding the Child is derived from a lost painting by Rogier van der Weyden known through copies, and later adopted by Benson’s teacher Gerard David. This is likely to be an early work by Benson, probably painted shortly after his arrival in Bruges by circa 1518, which is why it retains strong Lombard overtones. 

A tree-ring analysis (dendrochronology) of the present panel conducted in Ghent under the direction Prof. Dr M.J-P. Martens in March 2011 suggests that  1515-18 is the most probable date of execution. Infra-red imaging conducted at the same time reveals spontaneous underdrawing (see fig. 1), which shows that Benson originally intended the Virgin to be suckling the Infant Jesus, so that this work was just originally conceived as a Maria Lactans.  

Two later copies after this composition are known, one was sold London, Christie’s South Kensington, 29 October 2010, lot 8 (slightly bigger and of lesser quality). Another with a landscape background was in the collection of J. Fievez  in Brussels in 1934.