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Artist or Maker: Ambrosius Benson (Lombardy? late 15th Century-before 1550 Bruges)
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Notes: PROPERTY FROM A SOUTH AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Ambrosius Benson was a south Netherlandish painter of Italian birth. He was originally called Ambrogio Benzone, taking his first name from the patron saint of Milan, Saint Ambrose. He acquired Bruges citizenship in 1518 and was admitted to the guild of painters a year later. The basis for Benson's oeuvre was established by Friedländer who discovered works signed with initials 'AB' painted between 1520 and 1550. Works such as The Holy Family, formerly in the Germanisches Museum, Nuremberg and an altarpiece of Saint Anthony in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels are good examples of Benson's style. These surviving works also seem to belong to the same hand as a number of major altarpieces that were painted by an artist in Spain who was provisionally named 'The Master of Segovia'. Benson is believed to have benefited from working in the commercial city of Bruges and together with his Latin origins was able to establish strong ties with Spain.
Benson's Lombard origins enabled him to learn directly from the Renaissance masters and to paint naked figures better than his Flemish counterparts. Such Renaissance models as Judith, Lucretia and Caritas which Benson represented as scantily clad figures is evident in his later mythological scenes and history paintings of classical subjects. The more devotional images by Benson, like the present composition, follows a more established Bruges tradition, which relied on prototypes by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes and later Gerard David. Benson entered the workshop of Gerard David in Bruges where Adriaen van Isenbrandt had also been a pupil. The present The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is reminiscent of Isenbrandt's work, the Virgin and Child (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent) especially in the figures of the Virgin and Child and the realistic landscape with farmhouses in the background.
