Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the FlemingsVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the Flemings
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
As for those of the same province who are still living and in repute,
the first among them, both for his works in painting and for his many
copper-plate engravings, is Franz Floris of Antwerp, a disciple of the
above-mentioned Lambert Lombard. This Floris, who is held to be most
excellent, has worked in such a manner in every field of his
profession, that no one, they say there, has expressed better the
emotions of the soul, sorrow, gladness, and the other passions, and
all with most beautiful and bizarre inventions; insomuch that,
likening him to the Urbinate, they call him the Flemish Raffaello. It
is true that this is not demonstrated to us fully by the printed
sheets, for the reason that the engraver, be he ever so able, never by
a great measure equals the originals or the design and manner of him
who has drawn them. A fellow-disciple with Floris, learning under the
discipline of the same master, has been Willem Key of Breda, and also
of Antwerp, a temperate, serious, and judicious man, and a close
imitator of the life and the objects of nature, and in addition
passing fertile in invention, and one who more than any other executes
his pictures with good gradation and all full of sweetness and grace;
and although he has not the facility, boldness, and terrible force of
his brother-disciple Floris, for all that he is held to be truly
excellent. Michael Coxie, of whom I have spoken above, saying that he
carried the Italian manner into Flanders, is much celebrated among the
Flemish craftsmen for being profoundly serious and making his figures
such that they have in them much of the virile and severe; wherefore
the Fleming Messer Domenicus Lampsonius, of whom mention will be made
in the proper place, discoursing of the two masters named above and of
this Michael, likens them to a fine trio in music, in which each plays
his part with excellence. Much esteemed, also, among the same men, is
Antonius Moor of Utrecht in Holland, painter to the Catholic King,
whose colours, they say, in portraying whatever he may choose from
nature, vie with the reality and deceive the eye most beautifully. The
same Lampsonius writes to me that Moor, who is a man of very gentle
ways and much beloved, has painted a most beautiful altar-picture of
Christ rising from the dead, with two Angels, S. Peter, and S. Paul,
which is a marvellous thing. Marten de Vos, who copies excellently
well from nature, is held to be good in invention and colouring. But
in the matter of making beautiful landscapes, none are equal to Jakob
Grimmer, Hans Bol, and others, all of Antwerp and able men, of whom,
nevertheless, I have not been able to obtain particular information.
Pieter Aertsen, called Long Peter, painted in his native city of
Amsterdam an altar-picture with wing-panels, containing Our Lady and
other Saints; which whole work cost two thousand crowns. They also
celebrate as a good painter Lambert of Amsterdam, who dwelt many years
in Venice, and had the Italian manner very well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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