Joachim de Patinir

Joachim de Patinir , d. 1524, Flemish landscape and religious painter. He probably studied with Gerard David in Bruges. In 1515 he was a member of the painters' guild in Antwerp, where he spent the remainder of his life. In 1521 his friend Dürer attended his second wedding and painted his portrait. Patinir was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter. While small figures supply the theme of his pictures, they were sometimes painted by other artists. His immense vistas, painted with a limpid and meticulous clarity, have a serene lyricism. Among the best are The Flight into Egypt (Antwerp); The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Prado); The Baptism of Christ (Vienna); St. John at Patmos (National Gall., London); and Rest by the Way (Minneapolis Inst. of Arts). The Metropolitan Museum has a fine triptych, The Penitence of St. Jerome.

Bibliography: See study by R. A. Koch (1968).

Patinir, Joachim (or Joachim Patenier or Joachim Patinier) (b ?Dinant or Bouvignes, c.1480; d Antwerp, 1524). Netherlandish painter, a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre. Although his paintings nominally represent religious or mythological subjects, the figures are often dwarfed by the natural world and he has been described as the first landscape specialist in European art, or, in Kenneth Clark's words, ‘the first painter to make his landscapes more important than his figures’. Nothing is known of his early life, but he probably came from Dinant or its neighbourhood, in the craggy gorge of the River Meuse; his native scenery—so different from the flat countryside of most of the Netherlands—no doubt helped to inspire the rocky backgrounds that feature in his paintings. In 1515 he was enrolled in the painters' guild in Antwerp, and when Dürer visited the city in 1521 he became friendly with Patinir and described him as a ‘good landscape painter’ (perhaps the first occurrence of this term). There are only a very few signed paintings, for example the Baptism of Christ (KH Mus., Vienna), but many others have been attributed to him or his busy workshop. He also painted landscape backgrounds for other artists, including his friend Quentin Massys (who after Patinir's death became guardian of his children); the most securely authenticated instance of such collaboration is the Temptation of St Anthony (Prado, Madrid), which in a 1574 inventory of the Escorial is described as having ‘the figures by Master Quentin and the landscape by Master Joachim’. Patinir's work combines naturalistic observation of detail with a wonderful sense of fantasy, forming a link between Bosch and Bruegel.