The Nativity

Around 1525, Bruges was quietly losing its place in the world. The sea channel that had made it the richest trading city in northern Europe was silting up, and the merchants were drifting east to Antwerp. Its painters, though, kept turning out small devotional panels like this one in the refined old Netherlandish manner, images made to be prayed in front of at home. This Nativity carries the name of Adriaen Isenbrandt, who ran one of the busiest workshops in the city. The odd thing is that not a single surviving painting can be firmly documented as his own hand. The artist we call Isenbrandt was largely reconstructed by scholars long after his death, so the name really stands for a whole Bruges workshop and its manner. In that shop the master is said to have kept the faces and flesh for himself and left the rest to assistants, which is part of why pinning any one panel to him stays so difficult.