METSYS (MASSYS), QUENTIN. — Painter, born at Louvain in 1466, died at Antwerp in 1530. He is found in Antwerp in 1491, where in 1493 he enrolled in the painters’ guild, remaining there until his death.
From his earliest works there appears that duality of medieval and Renaissance, of mystical and humanly realistic, which is characteristic of him. Already in the Virgin and Child (Brussels Museum), he assimilates Leonardesque principles in the composition and sfumato, while also showing himself to be a delicate colorist. But predominant is the tradition of the early fifteenth century, which also characterizes his other Madonnas (Berlin, London, Antwerp, etc.).
Fundamental to Flemish art in general is the great Retable with scenes from the life of St. Anne (Brussels Museum) of 1509, in which one admires a broad coordination of movements and images, and a color that, through delicate transitions, gives new vibrations to forms and lights. The realistic tendency, represented above all in the altarpiece for the Guild of Carpenters (Antwerp Cathedral, now in the Museum [1508–11]), later develops into genuine genre paintings (The Banker and His Wife, 1514, in the Louvre; Amor disegnale, Portualès Collection, Paris, etc.), into caricatures, as in the Monstrous Woman in the Hugh Blaker Collection (London), or into portraits, which are very numerous—including the celebrated portraits of Erasmus and Thomas More—in which, perhaps owing to influences from Italian culture, the softness of the transitions of chiaroscuro and tone leads to the almost magical idealization of natural features. He also influenced Josse van Cleve, the Master of the Magdalene of Mansi, the Master of the Morisson Triptych, Gérard David himself, and Goossen van der Weyden; and it was from him that the landscape painter Ioachin Patinir, who collaborated with him on the Temptation of St. Anthony (Prado), derived his inspiration.