ADRIAEN ISENBRANT | The Stigmatisation of Saint Francis

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 Adriaen Isenbrandt), to Holstein;
Anonymous sale, Stuttgart, Auktionhaus Dr. Fritz Nagel, 4-5 December 1998, lot 548 (as Follower of Adriaen Isenbrandt);
With 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 panel is cradled, flat and stable. The paint surface is clean and the varnish is clear and even. A few very faint surface cracks are visible lower left. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals some retouching to these, throughout St Francis' tunic and the sky, and to the resting monk and the landscape to his immediate right, but the work otherwise appears in good condition. Offered in a painted wood frame in good condition.
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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 Isenbrant, 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 Isenbrant be reconsidered as by the hand of Isenbrant's contemporary Albert Cornelis, but in the case of the Weldon picture the handling and technique appear closest to the firmly attributed works by Isenbrant himself. 

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