The Invention Of Oil Painting

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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Tradition relates that Quinten Massys, the ‘smith of Antwerp’ became a painter only because his sweetheart would not marry a smith. The swinging brushwork and broad handling which he substituted for the small detailed touches of the earlier painters well accord with the vigor demanded by the work of a smithy. His handling of color is also new, for instead of placing unbroken blues, reds, yellows, etc., in immediate juxtaposition, he marshals his hues into a uniform color scheme. Disliking smallness in all things, he painted figures almost life-size; and when the size of his picture forbade the full length, he contended himself with half figures rather than reduce his scale to miniature proportions. ‘The Banker and his Wife’ at Louvre is a fine example of this innovation.

With the death of Quinten Massys in 1530 the first period of Flemish painting comes to an end. The next generation of Flemings either practised their art in Italy or, like Jan Gossart, called Mabuse (c. 1472-1535), imported Italian fashions in painting.

Mabuse, who took his name from the town of Maubeuge, where he was born about 1472, was a Fleming before he naturalized his art. This we may see by studying the magnificent example of his first manner at the National Gallery. ‘The Adoration of the Magi’, bought for the nation from the Countess of Carlisle in 1911, was painted by Mabuse before he visited Italy. In the architectural background we get a hint of the influence of Roger van der Weyden; the thirty figures in their rather pompous costumes are stolid and almost stony in comparison with the grace of his later works.

Some ten years later Mabuse visited Italy in the train of the Duke of Burgundy, and in Florence Mabuse came under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. That his first contact with the new naturalism did not have altogether happy results we know by the commonplace realism of his ‘Adam and Eve’ at Hampton Court. Soon, however, the warm air of Italy won him to gentleness, and in his Italianised works it is as a portrait-painter that Mabuse excels. Of his many portraits of ‘Margaret Tudor’ (the elder sister of Henry VIII), which now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery at Edinburgh.