Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1465-1530,Flemish painter. After studying in Louvain, he moved to Antwerp by 1491, remaining in that city throughout his life. Influences of Italian art, especially of Leonardo da Vinci, may be seen in his work, particularly in the delicate modeling, the subtle nuances of tone, and in the adoption of Leonardo's grotesque head studies for such pictures as The Old Man (Jacquemart-Andre Mus., Paris) and Ugly Duchess (National Gall., London). Massys sought inspiration also in works of earlier Flemish artists, especially of Jan van Eyck. The combined Flemish and Italian influences aided Massys in evolving a calm and measured style, with solid figures and soft textures. He developed a type of portraiture in which the sitter was placed against an appropriate background, as in his painting of St. Erasmus surrounded by books and papers (National Gall., Rome). There are religious subjects and portraits by Massys in the museums of Munich, Brussels, Antwerp, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Quentin's son, Jan Massys, c.1509?C1575, painted satirical and later more elegant works under French influence. Judith (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston) is characteristic. Another son, Cornelis Massys, d. after 1560, was a landscape painter and engraver.   Related Paintings of Quentin Matsys :. | St John Altarpiece | The Adoration of the Magi | Madonna and Child with the Lamb. | St Christopher | Portrait of Pieter Gillis |
Related Artists:
Jan Massijs
painted David and Bathsheba in 1562
William Morris Davis
February 12, 1850 - February 5, 1934,Davis, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was educated at Harvard. He returned to teach there in 1877 after a period as a meteorologist in Argentina and as an assistant with the North Pacific Survey. He became professor of physical geography in 1890 and of geology in 1898. Davis is acknowledged as the founder of geomorphology, the study of landforms. In his The Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania (1889) he first introduced what later became known as the Davisian systems of landscape analysis. His aim was to provide an explanatory description of how landforms change in an ideal situation and his most important contribution to this was his introduction of the cycle of erosion into geographical thought. He proposed a complete cycle of youth, maturity, and old age to describe the evolution of a landscape. In youth rivers occupy steep V-shaped valleys while in old age the valleys are broad. The end product would be a flat featureless plain he called a epeneplaine. This was an ideal cycle but in practice the cycle would invariably be interrupted by Earth movements. It was, nevertheless, strongly attacked by German geographers who objected to it on the grounds that it neglected such vital factors as weathering and climate in transforming the landscape. They also believed him to be undermining their argument that landforms could only be discovered by local fieldwork and the production of regional monographs. Davis also produced an influential work,
Edward Bower
floruit 1635-1667