Quentin Massys

Quentin Massys , c.1466-1530, 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-André 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.1509-1575, 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. His Arrival in Bethlehem is in the Metropolitan Museum.

Bibliography: See M. J. Friedländer, From Van Eyck to Bruegel (2 vol., 3d ed. 1969).

Massys (or Matsys or Metsys, Quentin) (c.1466–1530). Netherlandish painter, born in Louvain and active in Antwerp, where he was the leading painter of his day. He became a master in the painters' guild there in 1491, but his early career is obscure and his training is a matter of conjecture (van Mander says he was self-taught, and according to another early account he originally followed his father's trade as a blacksmith but took up art to woo his sweetheart away from a painter she admired). His first dated works are the altarpieces of St Anne (1507–9, Mus. Royaux, Brussels) and the Lamentation (1508–11, Koninklijk Mus., Antwerp). Massys continued the tradition of the great masters of 15th-century Netherlandish art, but he was also clearly aware of Italian art (particularly the work of Leonardo) and may well have crossed the Alps at some point in his career. In his exquisite Madonna and Child with Angels (c.1505, Courtauld Gal., London), for example, the iconographic type of the standing Virgin goes back to Jan van Eyck, but the putti holding a garland reveal Renaissance influence. The landscape backgrounds of some of his religious works were evidently done by his friend Joachim Patinir. Massys also painted portraits and genre scenes. The satirical quality in his pictures of bankers, tax-collectors, and avaricious merchants has been linked with the writings of the great humanist Erasmus. Certainly the two met, for Massys painted a pair of portraits of Erasmus (Royal Coll.) and his friend Petrus Aegidius (Earl of Radnor Coll., Longford Castle, Wiltshire) as a gift for Sir Thomas More in 1517. They instituted a new type—the scholar in his study—that influenced Holbein among others. Massys had two painter sons, Jan and Cornelis.