OVERBEKE, Adriaen van

Flemish painter. He was registered as a painter in the Guild of St Luke, Antwerp, in 1508 and accepted two apprentices in 1522. His known activity is restricted to the production and supply of carved and polychrome wooden altarpieces with painted shutters. In Antwerp carved altarpieces seem to have been produced by painters and carvers working within one workshop, which was possible since both belonged to the same guild. Van Overbeke may have run such a workshop.

In 1509, perhaps acting as a dealer, he was paid for supplying an altarpiece (destroyed), apparently of carved wood, for the Hospice of Our Lady in Lille. The polychromy and the painted wings were subsequently supplied by other artists. He received a commission in 1513 from the parish church of Kempen in the Rhineland for the carved wooden altarpiece with scenes from the Life of St Anne that is still on the high altar. The painted wings of the altarpiece are among the earliest firmly dated paintings in the style of Antwerp Mannerism and may be attributed to Adriaen van Overbeke himself or his assistants; the carved sections were probably the work of wood-carvers employed in his workshop.

A second carved altarpiece commissioned from van Overbeke by the Brotherhood of St Joseph for the church at Kempen in 1529 is apparently not identifiable with either of the church’s remaining altarpieces. Van Overbeke served as witness in an agreement, made in 1521 between the Franciscan monks of Dortmund and carver Master Gieliszoon, concerning the transportation of the Netherlandish carved wooden altarpiece now in the Petrikirche, Dortmund.