Ambrosius Benson

Ambrosius Benson was a Lombard, born in northern Italy around 1495, yet almost everything he painted belongs to the Flemish world. He turned up in Bruges in the 1510s, became a citizen in 1518, and a year later registered as an independent master in the city's guild of painters and decorators.

His start there was stormy. Benson had worked as an assistant to Gerard David, the leading painter in Bruges, and the two fell out over chests of paintings and drawings Benson had gathered from other artists. David held on to them against a debt he said Benson owed, so Benson took him to court and won, and David was sentenced to a short spell in prison. With his own patterns back, Benson built a busy workshop and took in pupils, among them two of his sons.

He grew prosperous, held posts on the city council and in the painters' guild, and turned out devotional pictures and portraits in a smooth Netherlandish manner, many small enough to travel. A good number went south to Spain and Italy through Bruges merchants. His name later dropped out of view, and much of what we now give back to him was only reassembled by 20th-century scholars working from that scattered export trade.