Quentin Massys
born c. 1465, /66, Louvain, Brabant [now in Belgium]
died 1530, Antwerp
Massys also spelled Matsys, Metsys, or Messys Flemish artist, the first
important painter of the Antwerp school.
Trained as a blacksmith in his native Louvain, Massys is said to have studied
painting after falling in love with an artist's daughter. In 1491 he went to
Antwerp and was admitted intothe painters' guild.
Among Massys' early works are two pictures of the Virgin and Child. His most
celebrated paintings are two large triptychaltarpieces, “The Holy Kinship,” or
“St. Anne Altarpiece,” ordered for the Church of Saint-Pieter in Louvain
(1507–09), and “The Entombment of the Lord” (c. 1508–11), both of which exhibit
strong religious feeling and precision of detail. His tendency to accentuate
individual expression is demonstrated in such pictures as “The Old Man and the
Courtesan” and “The Money Changer and His Wife” (see photograph). “Christus
Salvator Mundi” and “The Virgin in Prayer”display serene dignity. Pictures with
figures on a smaller scale are a polyptych, the scattered parts of which have
been reassembled, and a later “Virgin and Child.” His landscape backgrounds are
in the style of one of his contemporaries, the Flemish artist Joachim
Patinir;the landscape depicted in Massys' “The Crucifixion” is believed to be
the work of Patinir. Massys painted many notable portraits, including one of his
friend Erasmus.
Although his portraiture is more subjective and personal than that of Albrecht
Dürer or Hans Holbein, Massys' painting may have been influenced by both German
masters.Massys' lost “St. Jerome in His Study,” of which a copy survives in
Vienna, is indebted to Dürer's “St. Jerome,” now in Lisbon. Some Italian
influence may also be detected, as in “Virgin and Child” (Nationalmuseum, Poznań,
Pol.), in which the figures are obviously copied from Leonardo da Vinci's
“Virgin of the Rocks” (Louvre).
Massys' two sons were artists. Jan (1509–75), who became amaster in the guild of
Antwerp in 1531, was banished in 1543 for his heretical opinions, spent 15 years
in Italy or France, and returned to Antwerp in 1558. His early pictures were
imitations of his father's work, but a half-length “Judith with the Head of
Holofernes” of a later date, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, shows
Italian or French influence, as does “Lot and His Daughters” (1563;
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Cornelis Massys (1513–79), Quentin's second
son, became a master painter in 1531, painting landscapes in his father's style
and also executing engravings.
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