Circle of Cornelis Engebrechtsz.
Habsburg Netherlands · Northern Renaissance
The story
Circle of Cornelis Engebrechtsz. is the label a museum uses for a painting that looks like the work of Cornelis Engebrechtsz., the leading painter of Leiden early in the 16th century, but that it does not believe came from his own hand. Circle is a deliberately loose word. The painter may have trained in his workshop, worked beside it, or learned the manner from its pictures in the same town, and the records no longer say which.
What holds such works together is a way of painting, with busy compositions, elaborate costumes and strong emotion. A picture in this group is judged by comparison with the panels known to be by Engebrechtsz. himself, while the name of its real author is still missing.
