Biography of Quentin Massys
Name: Quentin Massys
Birth Date: c. 1465
Death Date: 1530
Place of Birth: Louvain, Belgium
Nationality: Flemish
Gender: Male
Occupations: artist
Quentin Massys
The paintings of the Flemish artist Quentin Massys (ca. 1465-1530) hark back to the works of his great predecessors but at the same time show an awareness of the Italian art of his own period.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 …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…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.The physiognomic types and soft modeling in some of Massy's late paintings, particularly Madonnas, as well as the grotesque quality of some of his portraits, have led to the supposition that he was familiar with works by Leonardo da Vinci. The Renaissance types of architecture and ornament with which Massys embellished his later works give proof of his interest in the new developments in Italian art, which, however, always remained foreign to him. Further Reading Massys is dealt with in Max J. Friedlaender, From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting (1921; trans. 1956; rev. ed. 1965), and Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Character (2 vols., 1953).
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