Adriaen Isenbrant

With Galerie Dr. Benedict & Co., Berlin, 1930;
Sydney J. Lamon, New York;
By whom posthumously sold, New York, Christie's, 29 June 1973, lot 33 (as by Adriaen Isenbrandt), to Holstein;
Anonymous sale, Stuttgart, Auktionhaus Dr. Fritz Nagel, 4-5 December 1998, lot 548 (as Follower of Adriaen Isenbrandt);
David Koetser, 1999. 

Art News, 27 December 1930;
M.J. Friedlander, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XI, The Antwerp Mannerists & Adriaen Ysenbrandt, Leyden & Brussels 1974, p. 90, cat. no. 200 (as present location unknown).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work on oak panel has been cradled. It is now flat and the paint layer is stable. The work does not seem to be particularly dirty. The retouches are good. Retouches are not particularly strongly illuminated under ultraviolet light, but tiny dots can be seen particularly in the lower sky and in the floating crucifix in the upper left sky. There are small retouches here and there within the numerous details of the landscape, foreground and figures, but the picture is clearly well preserved. Any retouches there may be are well applied and not numerous.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This compositional type, with its protagonist placed in the near foreground on a wooded hill and set in front of an aerial landscape, relates to a group of small- scale panel pictures traditionally given to Isenbrant. Many of of the pictures in this group depict Saint Jerome in a similar landscape, but clearly they all derive from a prototype made popular in Bruges by Isenbrant and his immediate contemporaries in the first half of the sixteenth century. 

The landscape itself is handled in a consistent manner to what are considered the core group of paintings assigned to Isenbrandt, for example the Diptych of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin (Bruges, Church of Our Lady) and the Magdalene in a Landscape (London, National Gallery). Lorne Campbell has recently suggested that many of the works previously given to Isenbrandt be reconsidered as by the hand of Isenbrandt's contemporary Albert Cornelis, but in the case of the Weldon picture the handling and technique appear closest to the firmly attributed works by Isenbrandt himself. 

We are grateful to Till-Holger Borchert and Peter van den Brink for supporting the attribution to Isenbrandt.