Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1465-1530 Quentin Massys, also spelled Matsys or Metsys, was born in Louvain, the son of a blacksmith. He is traditionally thought to have been trained in that craft by his father. Art in Louvain while Massys was growing up was dominated by Dirk Bouts. Massys became a member of the painters' guild in Antwerp in 1491 and died there in 1530. He represented a current of painting that flourished in Antwerp at this time of its sudden new prosperity. Erwin Panofsky (1953) described this trend, "archaism of around 1500," as "a prelude to, in fact a fact of, the Renaissance in Netherlandish painting," which prevailed in the southern Netherlands. The monumental Enthroned Madonna (Brussels), an early work by Massys, has features recalling both Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck. The central panel of Massys' imposing St. Anne Altarpiece, or the Holy Kinship (Brussels), which was commissioned for the church of St-Pierre in Louvain in 1507 and signed and dated 1509, has a prototype in the Holy Kinship of Geertgen tot Sint Jans. Even the physical types and costumes in Massys' version refer to Geertgen's. But Massys placed his rhythmically balanced figure groups in a domed, arcaded loggia that in architectural style appears to be reaching for a Renaissance vocabulary it cannot quite attain; certainly the architecture evokes a later period than that represented by the Gothic throne of the Enthroned Madonna. The calm and restraint of the St. Anne Altarpiece are replaced by heightened emotional expression in the next important painting by Massys that can be firmly dated, the Deposition triptych (Antwerp). This was commissioned in 1508 by the guild of joiners in Antwerp for their chapel in the Cathedral; Massys completed the composition in 1511. It was inspired by Rogier van der Weyden's great Deposition, which was in the church of St-Pierre in Louvain in Massys' time, and also quotes from Rogier's Entombment. Massys painted genre subjects, possibly with emblematic meaning, such as A Money Changer and His Wife, which belonged to a Netherlandish tradition that maintained its popularity right through the 17th century. In portraiture he made significant contributions. His pair of portraits of Erasmus and Petrus Aegidius, painted in 1517 for Sir Thomas More, set the pattern for representations of the scholar in his study.   Related Paintings of MASSYS, Quentin :. | St Mary Magdalene | St Anne Altarpiece (right wing, detail) eh | The Adoration of the Magi dh | The Adoration of the Magi | Virgin and Child |
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Anders Holm
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Olga Boznanska
Krakow 1865-1940 Paris,Polish painter. She took drawing lessons at home from the age of nine and began regular studies in 1883 under the portrait painter Kazimierz Pochwalski (1855-1940). She continued her training in 1884-5 at the Adam Baraniecki School of Art, the only school in Krakew accessible to women at that time. She went to Munich for further study, working in the studio of Carl Kricheldorf (b 1863) in 1886-7, and in that of Wilhelm Derr (1857-1900) in 1888. In 1889 she participated in the Internationale Kunstausstellung in Munich and opened her own studio, which over the next decade became a meeting-place for students. In 1895 she ran a private school of painting founded by Professor Theodor Humml (1864-1939).
WTEWAEL, Joachim
Dutch painter (b. 1566, Utrecht, d. 1638, Utrecht). Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was one of the last exponents of MANNERISM. From c. 1590 until 1628, the year of his latest known dated paintings, he employed such typical Mannerist formal devices as brilliant decorative colour, contrived spatial design and contorted poses. He sometimes combined such artifice with naturalism, and this amalgam represents the two approaches Dutch 16th- and 17th-century theorists discussed as uyt den geest ('from the imagination') and naer 't leven ('after life'). Wtewael's activity reflects the transition from Mannerism to a more naturalistic style in Dutch art. Slightly over 100 of his paintings and about 80 drawings are known. Subjects from the Bible and mythology predominate;