Artista attivo a Bruges, prima met

Oil on panel cm. 29x23. Framed The reverse of the panel bears an old inscription on a stretcher of the parquet: “ATTRIBUÉ À HANS HOLBEIN”.


The attribution to a Master of Bruges active in the first decades of the sixteenth century has been proposed by Dr. Peter van den Brink in an email communication to the owner, after examining a high-resolution digital image of the painting.

The panel shows extensive restorations and retouching throughout.



Many paintings produced in Bruges in the sixteenth century have been grouped around works securely attributed to masters such as Isenbrant, Benson, or the Claeissens family. However, this classification into a limited number of clusters of works appears clearly disproportionate to the number of artists’ names recorded in Bruges archives, considering that in the first forty years of the sixteenth century approximately ninety artists obtained the status of master in Bruges, while surviving works from the same period are associated with no more than a dozen names.
The present painting, like a large number of related works, can at the current state of knowledge be placed within the artistic production of Bruges on the basis of its stylistic features and iconographic characteristics, without, however, allowing for a more precise attribution.