Stuart Lochhead Sculpture is pleased to announce the opening of a focused exhibition centred on a major rediscovery: a panel painting of the Presentation in the Temple by the Brussels painter Valentin van Orley (c. 1470–1535). Unpublished and shown to an international public for the first time, the work significantly expands the extremely limited corpus associated with this early figure of Netherlandish art.
The painting represents the height of artistic production in Brussels around 1500. Its figures, architectural settings, spatial construction, and iconography immerse the viewer in the religious and visual culture of Burgundian Brabant. The only other securely attributed work by this artist is the monumental Saluzzo Altarpiece, now in the Brussels City Museum, where van Orley collaborated closely with the Borman family, a leading sculpture workshop, to produce a remarkable synthesis of sculpture and painting. This intersection of the arts, combined with the extraordinary density of artistic production in Brabant at the turn of the sixteenth century—of which van Orley was a key protagonist—marks one of the most dynamic moments in Western art history.
Cast attributed to Renier Van Thienen , Saint Francis (detail), c. 1480
The focused display places this rediscovered panel within a broader context through a small group of works illustrating the development of art in Flanders throughout the fifteenth century. A finely cast figure of Saint Francis, attributed to the Brussels founder Renier van Thienen (active c. 1465-1498), exemplifies the technical and artistic sophistication of Burgundian metalwork, combining refined modelling with a striking sense of presence.
Claus de Werve (c. 1380-1439), workshop, A Deacon Saint (detail), c. 1410-1430
Alongside it, a rare limestone figure of a Deacon Saint from the workshop of Claus de Werve (c. 1380–1439). De Werve had succeeded another Dutchman, his uncle Claus Sluter (c. 1350–c. 1405), as court sculptor to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1406, continuing the veristic carving of his uncle and supplementing it with a more tender approach. A stone figure with such an attribution has not appeared on the market for decades.
Together, these works offer a concise insight into artistic production in Flanders from 1410 to 1500, a period defined by innovation, international contact, and by the close relationship between painting and sculpture. At its centre, the Presentation in the Temple stands as both a major rediscovery and a key work for understanding the emergence of one of the most important moments in the history of the Northern Renaissance, and of European art at large.