拍品專文
Adriaen Isenbrandt is recorded as the pupil of Gerard David, but little else about him is documented; a large body of pictures, coherent in style but uneven in quality, has over the years been collected under his name. As Friedlnder states, 'The works cannot be neatly separated into those that are by the master's own hand and those that constitute workshop production. All that we can distinguish is varying degrees to which the paintings bear a personal stamp' (M.J. Friedlnder, Early Netherlandish Painting, XI, ed. H. Pauwels and S. Herzog, 1971, p. 47).
The Evans triptych, composed of a central Nativity scene flanked by wings depicting Saints Jerome and Catherine of Alexandria, is a domestic altarpiece made for private devotion, and displays the gentle sfumato and graceful drawing typical of the Bruges master's paintings. Like many of Isenbrandt's works, it is indebted to a composition by Gerard David (see the altarpiece of the Nativity, in the Jules S. Bache collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. no. L.44.23.20) though its mood, palette and formal idiom mark it as a characteristic work by Isenbrandt. No other identical altarpiece of this subject by the artist is known, but versions of the two wings (framed as one painting) were offered at Christie's, London, July 2, 1965, lot 129, as Saints Ocysellus and Victoria, and a version of the central Nativity with arched top was sold at Christie's, London, Nov. 29, 1974, lot 61.
The Evans triptych, composed of a central Nativity scene flanked by wings depicting Saints Jerome and Catherine of Alexandria, is a domestic altarpiece made for private devotion, and displays the gentle sfumato and graceful drawing typical of the Bruges master's paintings. Like many of Isenbrandt's works, it is indebted to a composition by Gerard David (see the altarpiece of the Nativity, in the Jules S. Bache collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. no. L.44.23.20) though its mood, palette and formal idiom mark it as a characteristic work by Isenbrandt. No other identical altarpiece of this subject by the artist is known, but versions of the two wings (framed as one painting) were offered at Christie's, London, July 2, 1965, lot 129, as Saints Ocysellus and Victoria, and a version of the central Nativity with arched top was sold at Christie's, London, Nov. 29, 1974, lot 61.