METSYS (MASSYS), QUENTIN. — Painter, born in Louvain in 1466, died in 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 the medieval and the Renaissance, of the mystical and the humanly realistic, which is typical of him. Already in the Virgin with Child (Brussels Museum) he assimilates in the composition and in the sfumato Leonardo’s principles, showing himself at the same time a delicate colorist. But predominant is the tradition of the early 15th century, which also characterizes his other Madonnas (Berlin, London, Antwerp, etc.).
Fundamental for Flemish art in general is the great Altarpiece with stories of St. Anne (Brussels Museum) of 1509, in which one admires a broad coordination of movements and images, and a color that, with delicate transitions, gives new vibrations of forms and lights. The realistic tendency, represented above all in the altarpiece for the Carpenters' Guild (Antwerp cathedral, now in the Museum [1508–11]), later culminates in true genre paintings (The Banker and His Wife, 1514, in the Louvre; Unequal Love, Portualés collection, Paris, etc.), in caricatures, as in the Monstrous Woman of the Hugh Blaker collection (London), or in portraits, very numerous (among which are celebrated those of Erasmus and Thomas More), in which, perhaps under the influence of Italian culture, the softness of the chiaroscuro and tonal transitions leads to an almost magical idealization of natural data. He also influenced Josse van Cleve, the Master of the Mansi Magdalene, the Master of the Morrison Triptych, Gérard David himself, Goossen van der Weyden, and from him sprang the landscape painter Joachim Patinir, who collaborated with him on the Temptation of St. Anthony (Prado).