The Burlington magazine

by Unknown

ARTICLE V

GERARD DAVID worked in Bruges from the commencement of 1484 until his death, August 13, 1523, yet he does not appear to have taken a single apprentice during all that period, at least the register of the gild of St. Luke contains no entry of any such. It is, however, certain that he had several assistants; one of these, Adrian Isenbrant, I was able to rescue from oblivion in 1865. He came to Bruges in 1510, was admitted as free master into the gild on November 29, and continued working there for more than forty years, until his death in July 1551. He acquired a reputation for skill in painting the nude and the human countenance, and executed many pictures for Spain, which as a rule he sent by Antwerp to Bilbao. Although no document has as yet been discovered connecting his name with any particular picture, yet there is hardly any doubt that he is the author of a number of works certainly painted in Bruges between 1510 and 1551, the figures in which are remarkable for their careful execution and sweetness of expression, characteristics attributed to the works of Isenbrant by old writers. Several of these works are still in Spain, others have been brought from the Peninsula within the last fifty years. Of these I purpose to treat later on; at present I shall confine my remarks to the works included in the exhibition. The most important of these is a large diptych given to the church of Our Lady at Bruges by Barbara Le Maire, widow of George Van de Velde, a wealthy cloth merchant, who had held many offices in the communal council. The dexter panel (178) represents the Blessed Virgin seated with clasped hands, overwhelmed with grief, in a niche of Renascence architecture. Around her, set in architectural framework, are seven little pictures representing the seven dolours; in some of these are motives borrowed from the engravings of Martin Schongauer and Albert Dürer. The sinister panel (179), which disappeared from the church about 1832, came into the possession of the duke of Arenberg, who in 1874 sold it to the Brussels museum. On the face are pictured George Van de Velde in the costume of a brother of the confraternity of the holy Blood, and his wife, protected by their baptismal patrons, and accompanied by their nine sons and eight daughters, all kneeling in prayer. The subject on the dexter panel is repeated on the reverse of this in grisaille but with differences, so that whether the diptych was shut or open, on festivals or ferias, the figure of the sorrowful Mother, to whom the widow Van de Velde was very devoted—multum affectata—was always exposed to the veneration of the faithful. George Van de Velde died on April 28, 1528; his second son, John, who in the picture wears a surplice, was ordained priest and said his first mass in the church of Our Lady in 1530—31, about which date his mother presented the picture. ¶ The Blessed Virgin and Child seated in a landscape with SS. Katherine, Barbara, Dorothy, Margaret and Agnes (145), lent by Count Arco-Valley, is a charming early composition, of which there is a weak repetition in the academy of St. Luke at Rome. The prototype of this picture is doubtless the dexter panel of the diptych painted by Memlinc for John Du Celier, now in the Louvre at Paris, whilst variations are in the gallery at Munich, at Geneva, and at Buckingham Palace. A triptych lent by M. Lotman, of Berne (177), represents the Blessed Virgin and Child and two angels playing a mandoline and a harp; and on the exterior, St. Jerome praying before a crucifix. The carpet here is from the same model as that under the Virgin’s feet in 145.

ST. LUKE, BY ADRIAN ISENBRANT; IN THE POSSESSION OF MESSRS. P. AND D. COLNAGHI

TRIPTYCH: THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH TWO ANGELS, BY ADRIAN ISENBRANT; IN THE COLLECTION OF MONSIEUR LOTMAN

THE VISION OF SAINT ILDEPHONSUS, BY ADRIAN ISENBRANT IN THE COLLECTION OF THE EARL OF NORTHBROOK

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LARGER IMAGE

A panel (183) belonging to the earl of Northbrook represents the Blessed Virgin and Child enthroned, in a garden, beneath a canopy, to which is attached a cloth of honour; the donor and his wife and family kneel at the sides; the background is formed by a stone wall, on which two peacocks and a pea-hen are sunning themselves. The head of our Lady has been restored. ¶ Two shutters of a triptych (180), lent by Mr. R. von Kaufmann, represent a donor and his wife with their children protected by St. John the Evangelist and St. Barbara(?). The donors on these shutters are, though a few years older, strikingly like those in 183. But in the earlier picture the man, aged thirty-four, is represented with one son and one daughter, both dead when the picture was painted, while behind his wife, aged thirty-three, kneel a boy of nine and a girl of five. The man in 180 is represented with one son dead, and his wife with three daughters, one of whom was dead. ¶ The vision of St. Ildephonsus, bishop of Toledo (151), belonging to Lord Northbrook, is in every respect a very remarkable work; the composition unusually good, the colouring rich and harmonious. The saint, kneeling on the foot-pace of an altar on the north side of a large church of picturesque architecture, looks up with outstretched arms at the Blessed Virgin, who, attended by three lovely angels, is about to vest him with a chasuble. Behind him kneel three monks, two looking up at the heavenly apparition, the third absorbed in prayer. In the background a procession of chanting monks, followed by a pious crowd of lay folk, winds its way round the choir. The figures of all are most carefully executed, and are remarkable for the delicacy of their modelling and sweetness of expression.[105] ¶ Another brightly coloured picture (152), also belonging to Lord Northbrook, represents the Blessed Virgin seated on a stone throne adorned with rams’ heads, holding the divine Child, who has his left arm round her neck and is caressing her chin. The Virgin’s face has little character, but the Child’s expression is very pleasing. ¶ St. Mary Magdalene in the desert, kneeling before a large crucifix held by an angel (182), from the De Somzée collection, is a remarkable work, with a landscape background with peculiar rocks. A panel with a half-length figure of St. Luke holding a portrait of the Blessed Virgin and Child (187), lent by Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi, is a fine work, the evangelist being probably the master’s own portrait. A triptych belonging to the cathedral of Bruges (184) represents in the centre the Presentation in the Temple with the kneeling figure of an Augustinian nun of the Le Gros family, probably the granddaughter of Philip Wielant and Joan van Halewyn, whose portraits on the shutters, as remarked by M. G. Hulin, are evidently not painted from life. The triptych, which probably came from one of the Augustinian convents suppressed at the end of the eighteenth century, was, with many others now preserved in the cathedral, presented to it by M. van Huerne. ¶ A panel (185) lent by M. Sedelmeyer, with full-length figures of St. Andrew, St. Michael, and St. Francis in the foreground, with a representation of Calvary in the upper portion, is a late work, the Calvary closely resembling that in the diptych of our Lady of seven dolours. The exhibition included several other works either copies or painted under the influence of Isenbrant. ¶ Two other masters who flourished in Bruges about this time, and who were restored to history by me, one in 1860 and the other in 1863, were each represented by one authentic work. John Prevost, a native of Mons in Hainault, was born c. 1462. It is not known where he learned his art or to whom he was apprenticed. He visited Antwerp in 1493 and was admitted as free-master into the gild of St. Luke, but shortly after removed to Bruges, where he bought the right of citizenship and settled definitely. He also purchased the freedom of the town of Valenciennes in 1498, in which year, if not previously, he married Joan de Quaroube, a well-to-do elderly lady, who, after twenty-five years of wedded life, had in 1489 been left a widow by the celebrated painter and miniaturist Simon Marmion. She died in 1506. Prevost, who married again three times, died in January 1529. The only picture proved by documentary evidence to be by him is the Last Judgement (167), painted in 1525 for the town hall, lent by the museum where it is now kept. An earlier representation of the same subject, said to have been painted by him for the Dominicans of Bruges (169), was lent by Viscount de Ruffo Bonneval. A third, lent by Mr. E. F. Weber (168), attributed to him by M. Hulin,[106] appears to me to be the work of an imitator. It is not only inferior in drawing and execution, but the treatment of the subject—the risen are bringing account books which the angels are verifying—is childish. M. Hulin enumerates eleven other pictures as being certainly, and three more as possibly, by Prevost. Four of these were in the exhibition (109, 157, 189, and 342); a fifth, the Blessed Virgin and Child in an aureole surrounded by angels, with the prophets and sibyls, at St. Petersburg, which he believes to be the picture painted in 1524 for the altar of St. Daniel in the church of St. Donatian at Bruges. The other six are SS. Antony of Padua and Bonaventure, in the Brussels gallery; an Adoration of the Magi, at Berlin; the Blessed Virgin and Child, in the National gallery (No. 713, attributed to Mostaert); another with SS. Benedict and Bernard, at Windsor castle; another with a carthusian, exhibited as by Isenbrant at the Burlington club in 1892; and a Virgin and Child, at Carlsruhe, where it is attributed to Gossart. The three which he thinks may be attributed to him are the heads of Christ and the Blessed Virgin (193 and 194), and the charming picture of St. Francis renouncing the world (150), belonging to Mr. Sutton Nelthorpe. Few indeed are those who write on the early masters who can resist the temptation of attributing to them a goodly list of works. Much may be learnt when, as in the present case, serious arguments are started which can be discussed, and no harm can result so long as the attributions are not accepted as certainties by museum authorities. ¶ The other master, Albert Cornelis, who died in 1532, is still only known by one remarkable picture (170), the Coronation of the B. Virgin. ¶ A painting of the Mater dolorosa (105), formerly in the church of the Austin friars, lent by the cathedral, is said to be a copy of a miraculous picture in the church of Ara caeli at Rome, of which other copies were formerly at Abbenbroek and Romerswale in Zealand, and a third, if not one of these two, is now in the gallery at Munich. The copy exhibited was traditionally attributed to John van Eyck, and the cipher in the corner, supposed to be his, was adduced as a proof. This cipher, retouched by the restorer who re-gilt the background, is certainly that used as a signature by John van Eecke or van Eeckele, a painter who settled in Bruges and was admitted as free-master into the gild of St. Luke in September 1534, and worked there until his death in November 1561. A panel lent by the museum of Tournay (106), representing the vision of St. Bernard with other episodes in the life of that saint in the landscape background, is an original work of the master signed with his cipher. ¶ A panel (250) lent by the Black Sisters represents St. Nicolas of Tolentino, and on the exterior an Austin friar, Roger De Jonghe (born 1482, died 1579), kneeling at a prayer desk on which is an open book.

PORTRAIT OF ROGER DE JONGHE, AUSTIN FRIAR, REVERSE OF A PANEL OF A TRIPTYCH, BY AN UNKNOWN PAINTER; BELONGING TO THE SŒURS NOIRES AT BRUGES

EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF ST. BERNARD, BY JOHN VAN EECKE; IN THE TOURNAI MUSEUM