Bernard van Orley Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1515 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Joachim Patinir Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1518-24 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Peeter Baltens Christ on the Road to Calvary 1560s oil on panel private collection |
"The city of Antwerp was the richest port in Europe, and the wharves along the Schelde offered a spectacle of incessant activity, to which the prestige of a flourishing artistic school only added. ... Antwerp was the clearinghouse and marketplace for incoming colonial merchandise. The city became the art capital of Flanders, and it developed a style that borrowed from Italian models. Bosch, Metsys, Mabuse and Van Scorel traveled to Venice and Rome, acquiring the monumental sense of Italian perspective, but also meeting other artists and participating in the birth of the "Modern Manner." A learned, international city, open-minded and tolerant, with a prestigious multilingual publishing industry, Antwerp remained Catholic, and it saw itself as an outpost of the Counter-Reformation in the face of the northern, Calvinist United Provinces. All the same, there were violent eruptions of Protestant iconoclasm, especially in 1579-80, which destroyed many art works, particularly in the cathedral; they were eventually replaced with Rubens's large altarpieces."
– Stefano Zuffi, from European Art of the Sixteenth Century, translated by Antony Shugaar (Getty Museum, 2005)
Lucas van Valckenborch Tower of Babel 1594 oil on panel Louvre |
Karel van Mander Adoration of the Magi 16th century oil on panel Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
Jan Gossart Adam and Eve 1510 oil on panel Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid |
Bartholomeus Spranger Venus and Adonis 1597 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Johannes Stradanus Vanity, Modesty and Death 1569 oil on panel Louvre |
Joos van Cleve Altarpiece of the Lamentation ca. 1520-25 oil on panel Louvre |
Joos van Cleve Portrait of Eleonora, Queen of France ca. 1530 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Otto van Veen The artist painting, surrounded by his family 1584 oil on canvas Louvre |
William Scrots Portrait of Emperor Maximilian II 1544 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Antonis Mor Portrait of Giovanni Battista di Castaldo ca. 1550 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Antonis Mor Portrait of a Goldsmith 1564 oil on canvas Mauritshuis, The Hague |