The Brunswick Monogrammist was an anonymous Netherlandish painter, active in the mid-to-late 16th century. He painted religious scenes but also several scenes of secular merriment, including brothel and tavern scenes. He has been called "the most significant precursor of Pieter Bruegel the Elder".

Identity

The monogram for which the Brunswick Monogrammist is named appears only once, on his (or her) Parable of the Great Supper in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum

Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum

The Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum is an art museum in the German city of Braunschweig, Lower Saxony.Founded in 1754, the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum is one of the oldest museums in Europe. It houses a collection of masters of Western art, including Cranach, Holbein, Van Dyck, Vermeer, Rubens, and...

 in Brunswick

Braunschweig

Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....

. It is composed of the interlocked letters J, V, A, M, S and L, and neither it nor careful analysis of his work have yielded consensus about his identity. His (or her, as Verhulst was female) paintings have been attributed to a number of painters, including Jan van Hemessen, Mayken Verhulst

Mayken Verhulst

Mayken Verhulst was a sixteenth-century miniature, tempera and watercolor painter, identified by Lodovico Guicciardini in 1567 as one of the most important female artists in the Low Countries.-Life:Mayken Verhulst was born in Mechelen in 1518...

 and Jan van Amstel

Jan van Amstel

Jan van Amstel was a Dutch Northern Renaissance painter.In or before 1528, van Amstel moved to Antwerp, when he joined its Guild of Saint Luke. He married Adriane van Doornicke, who would after his death remarry and give birth in 1544 to the future painter Gillis van Coninxloo...

.

Partial list of Works

• A Brothel Scene (New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery)
• A Dispute in a Brothel (Sold in May 2007 at Christie's Amsterdam) http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=F970DB4FF3D22D2D021870D5FDA40CA7
• St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness (Sold December 2005 at Christie's London) http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=6570F1FF8B0091D978EBFCF6C9620872
• Ecce Homo (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/zoeken/asset.jsp?id=SK-A-1603&lang=en
• The Feeding of the Poor or Feeding of the Five Thousand or Parable of the Great Supper (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.) http://www.artnet.com/library/05/0558/T055822.asp
• Itinerant Entertainers in a Brothel (London, National Gallery) http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG5577
• Tavern Scene (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz) http://books.google.com/books?id=FTj7BeKb5qoC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=brunswick+monogrammist&source=web&ots=bYm7uyrFDA&sig=uHHemCckLDZQmH-a4JiLJNXkTv0
• Road to Calvary

See also

• Early Renaissance painting
  Early Renaissance painting
  Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of that period of European history known as the Renaissance, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music and science...
  
  
• Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting
  Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting
  Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. These artists, who span from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim...
  
  
• Renaissance in the Netherlands
  Renaissance in the Netherlands
  The Renaissance in the Low Countries is the cultural period that roughly corresponds to the 16th century in the Low Countries. In 1500 the Seventeen Provinces were in a personal union under the Burgundian Dukes, and with the Flemish cities as centers of gravity, culturally and economically formed...