SCHOOL OF ANTWERP, circa 1525
School of Antwerp, circa 1525
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Oil on panel, 16.5 x 12.5 cm (6.5 x 4.9 inch); contained in a Neo-Gothic giltwood frame of c.1900, contained in a mahogany box with glass lid and lined with red velvet, c.1900
Provenance
~ Collection of the painter Antoon van Welie (1866 – 1956)
~ His sale, Mak van Waaij, Amsterdam, 7 April 1936, lot 48, reproduced, as ‘Adriaen Isenbrant’, sold for 900 guilders (cutting from sale catalogue attached to reverse of mahogany box)
~ Collection Barons Van Harinxma thoe Slooten, The Netherlands, until 2024
***
When this painting was auctioned from the collection of the society portrait painter Antoon van Welie at Mak van Waaij in Amsterdam in 1936, it was catalogued as by Adriaen Isenbrant, and was sold for a considerable amount. Isenbrant is thought to have been born in Antwerp around 1485 and died in 1551 in Bruges, where he spent much of his career.1 The painting disappeared into a private collection and has now resurfaced again after nearly a century. Current scholarship no longer views the identification as Isenbrant as valid, but scholarly opinions place the painting either in Antwerp or in Bruges, executed in one of their many high-skilled workshops during the first half of the sixteenth century.
1. For the artist, see Jean C. Wilson, ‘Adriaen Isenbrant and the Problem of his Oeuvre, Thoughts on Authorship, Style and the Methodology of Connoisseurship’, Oud Holland 109 (1995), pp. 1-17.
