The Artist: Born about 1509, Jan Massys was the first child of the famous Antwerp painter Quinten Massys and his wife, Catharina Heyns. Probably trained in his father’s workshop, Jan and his younger brother Cornelis both joined the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1531—that is, the year after their father’s death. Jan married Anna van Thuylt around 1538, and they had four children, including Quinten the younger, who also became a painter.
Jan lived in turbulent times in Antwerp, which became the center of Reformation uprisings. Having been identified with links to the Loïsts, a libertine sect, Jan, his brother Cornelis, and fourteen others were accused of heresy on November 10, 1544, and were exiled from Brabant. Jan left his family and fled to Italy, probably to Genoa, and perhaps spent some years near Fontainbleau, as later stylistic characteristics of his work suggest. Massys’s petition to the Council of Brabant to allow his return to Antwerp in 1551 was unsuccessful, but a second attempt in 1554 was approved. By the end of 1555, Jan had returned home to his family. In subsequent years, he was relatively successful in his métier, especially between 1559–68. He took on three apprentices— Frans van Thuylt (in 1536), Frans de Witte (in 1543), and Olivier de Cuyper (in 1569)—who are known today only by name but not by any identifiable works. A fourth apprentice was enrolled anonymously in the Liggeren in 1567 (as “Eenen by Jan Quinten, schilder”).[1] Jan died in 1573.
Although mentioned by the contemporary artist biographers Guicciardini (1567) and Vasari (1568), Jan remained in the shadow of his more famous father. However, Karel Van Mander (1604) admitted that Jan “too was a great painter.” Max J. Friedländer (1936) and Leo van Puyvelde (1962) devoted early studies to Jan Massys, and Luis Reis-Santos (1964) attempted to differentiate the works of Jan and Quinten.[2] Leontine Buijnsters-Smets’s monograph (1995) starts with Jan’s earliest dated work, a
Saint Jerome of 1537 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), and builds the oeuvre backward and forward from that point.[3] Jan’s youthful works predictably depend upon his father’s compositions, from which he produced copies. Jan’s 1552
Virgin and Child (Palazzo Bianco, Genoa) and the 1552
Nativity (private collection; sale, Sotheby’s, London, July 4, 2013, no. 105) are the only signed and dated works from his years in exile. But from this starting point others can be assembled that show the influences of Leonardo da Vinci’s followers (as in the Genoa, Palazzo Bianco Virgin and Child) and the newly developing mannerist style (as in Jan’s
Caritas, also at the Palazzo Bianco). Later works reveal the influence of the Fontainbleau school, such as his
Judith and Holofernes (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp) or
David and Bathsheba of 1562 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Finally, Jan further developed his father Quinten’s interest in satirical paintings by producing several versions of unequal lovers and merry company scenes. The most recent catalogue raisonné of Jan Massys’s works is by Leontine Buijnsters-Smets (1995) and should be consulted for further details of the artist’s life and works.
The Painting: This imposing painting masterfully demonstrates advances in the development of new genres of painting in the 1530s in Antwerp. Increased attention paid to landscape art, still-life painting, and figural motifs derived from the works of Leonardo da Vinci and his followers were already in their incipient stages in works by Joos van Cleve, such as the
Virgin and Child (The Met,
1982.60.47) or the
Virgin and Child with the Cherries (formerly Hester Diamond Collection, New York), and by Quinten Massys’s
Virgin and Child with the Cherries (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and Mauritshuis, The Hague), all of about 1525–30 (see figs. 1–2 above). In the
Rest on the Flight, the dominance of the large-scale figures in the composition, the abundance of grapes and apples at the lower right, and the extensive landscape setting are individually so prominent that they strain the cohesion of the painting. It is only upon close inspection that one may identify certain details in the background—Herod’s troops advancing between the rocky masses at the upper left to seek out and kill the Christ Child, and Joseph filling his water jug from a stream at center right—that indicate the overall theme of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt.
The Flight into Egypt is briefly recounted in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (2:13), but the Rest on the Flight is only discussed in apocryphal accounts such as the Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew and the
Golden Legend of Jacobus da Voragine. The latter relates how the Holy Family stopped to rest on the third day of their travels, leading to early miracles of the Christ Child, who caused a spring of water to appear to quench the thirst of the family. The still life of grapes and apples is not without symbolic meaning. While providing sustenance for the Holy Family, the two large bunches of grapes also refer to the Eucharist and to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for humankind. The apples, likewise, recall the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden through Eve's offering to Adam of the forbidden fruit. Here this fruit signals the promise of forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ and references Mary as the new Eve, just as Christ is the new Adam.
The Attribution: This painting relates stylistically to a group of Virgin and Child images that were executed in Quinten Massys’s workshop in the 1520s, during the late years of the master’s activity (see Refs.). As Larry Silver has pointed out, after having exploited models coming from the early Netherlandish tradition (from Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden, to Dieric Bouts and Hans Memling), Quinten reconsidered his sources, looking at the very popular Virgin and Child paintings produced by his younger colleague Joos van Cleve.[4] Both painters appear to have been deeply indebted to Leonardo da Vinci, the compositions of which were known through networks that are not yet clear. Quinten’s change is particularly evident in paintings such as the lost
Madonna of the Cherries, the Berlin
Butter Madonna, and the Rattier Madonna at the Louvre, each of which were replicated several times by the workshop.[5]
At this time, Quinten developed a new interest in the naturalistic depiction of intimacy and the human qualities of the Virgin and Child. Furthermore, he updated his compositions to favor representations of everyday life where the symbolic fruits became informal still-life elements, and the landscape assumed a greater importance. It is probably not by chance that this interesting shift developed when Quinten’s son Jan began to collaborate with his father. Perhaps more than his father, Jan was eager to embrace new trends and market demands. He completed his apprenticeship in his father’s workshop and likely began to collaborate with him, with increasing responsibility from around 1526. Unfortunately, we have no paintings by Jan that can be dated with certainty to this period. Therefore, his earliest achievements must be traced through the identification of those workshop paintings that present the stylistic features recognizable later on in his mature oeuvre.
Attempting to characterize Jan’s initial steps in the shadows of Quinten, Luis Reis-Santos and Villy Scaff discussed the possibility that some of Quinten’s paintings were executed in collaboration with Jan, or were finished by Jan, or that copies of Quinten’s prototypes were produced by Jan after 1530 in order to perpetuate his father’s legacy.[6] Leontine Buijnsters-Smets attributed to Jan himself the two copies of the
Rattier Madonna (both in private collections).[7] Based on technical and stylistic comparisons, Maria Clelia Galassi proposed Jan as the painter of the
Virgin and Child in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, which is derived from Quinten’s
Butter Madonna.[8]
Prominent characteristics of Jan’s style that separate his works from those of Quinten include a somewhat less convincing rendering of chiaroscuro, and a predominance of pink and enamel-like flesh tones, with the modelling of the hands appearing particularly flat. There is a different approach to rendering space in which the horizon line is elevated in order to provide a more extensive background setting. In addition, Jan’s figures are consistently projected forward, closer to the viewer. Their draperies are broadly painted and the poses are somewhat repetitive. All these features are found in The Met’s
Rest of the Flight into Egypt that may be attributed, insofar as the figures are concerned, to Jan at the end of the 1530s or the beginning of the 1540s, after he had become a free master.[9] This attribution to Jan was also mentioned briefly in the early literature (see Loo 1902 and Burroughs and Weale 1932). Stylistic affinities can be found with the
Madonna in Brussels (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts) and with the
Madonna in Antwerp’s Sint Jacobskerk of around 1535 (figs. 3, 4). Also close in terms of the rendering of the heads of the Virgin and Child is the
Holy Family with Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; fig. 5) of the 1530s, and the head of Susanna in
Susanna and the Elders (ca. 1530s, Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp; figs. 6, 7).[10]
All visual evidence points to the fact that while Jan painted the figures in The Met's panel, a collaborator painted the landscape background. As is the case with other examples in The Met’s collection, namely Joos van Cleve’s
Crucifixion with Saints and a Donor of about 1520 (
41.190.20a–c) and Virgin and Child of about 1525 (
1982.60.47), the x-radiograph (fig. 8) shows that the brushwork of the landscape carefully circumnavigates the contours of the figures. The painting of the figures and the landscape does not overlap at the edges of forms, thereby indicating two different stages of work by two separate artists. Walter Gibson (1989) identified this landscape painter as the Master of the Lille Sermon, while Luc Serck (1990) renamed the specialist as the Master of the Liège Disciples at Emmaus (Netherlandish, active mid-16th century), based on the close similarity of the landscape in the
Rest on the Flight with that found in the background of the
Road to Emmaus (Musée d’Art Religieux et d’Art Mosan, Liège).[11]
Bolstering the attribution of The Met’s panel to Jan Massys is further information from the technical examination of the painting in comparison with other paintings studied by Maria Clelia Galassi.[12] The underdrawing is scarcely visible with infrared reflectography, only appearing along some contours (fig. 9). It establishes the outlines of the faces, the Child’s body, and the Madonna’s hands, by means of a liquid medium, perhaps based on a very fine preliminary sketch in a dry medium. Some shifting in the position of the Child’s legs and the Virgin’s proper right hand were made during the paint stage. This type of underdrawing (purely linear, executed by brush over the possible first sketch in a dry medium), as well as the tendency to shift details such as hands and feet, is consistent with what has been observed by Galassi in her technical study of the works of Jan Massys. Infrared reflectography also shows a technical detail that can be found in Jan’s works and that seems to be quite characteristic of his painting technique from early on. This is his particular way of blending the dark lines of the draperies (see the Virgin’s robe) through short hatching, achieved by rubbing the brush on the still-wet color. A similar wet-in-wet treatment can be seen in the early
Tax Collector of 1539 (Gemäldegaerie, Dresden) and the 1552
Madonna and Child in Genoa, as well as in later works such as
Lot and his Daughters (1563; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
Both the x-radiograph and the infrared reflectogram (figs. 8, 9) show significant changes in the Virgin's head covering and dress. Initially, Massys conceived of the Virgin as an elegantly dressed lady, with a refined turban and the white fabric of her undergarment coming through her decoratively slit left sleeve. These elements of luxurious fashion were then revised during a later painting stage: the turban was transformed into a thin, modest veil, and the design of her sleeve was simplified. Examination with a high-powered binocular microscope, followed by cross-section analysis (see Technical Notes) revealed that the color of the Virgin’s sleeve as well as her dress also was altered from red to blue. Furthermore, this analysis indicated that the changes took place over a UV-fluorescing resinous layer, possibly a layer of varnish, suggesting that some time had passed between the initial completion of the painting and the second intervention. This is confirmed as well by the fact that the upper blue paint layer flowed into the already aged drying cracks of the red paint below. We can only guess the reasons for the alterations in the style and color of the Virgin’s costume. This choice of austerity also involved the addition of golden halo rays around the heads—in the case of the Virgin, in a particular form of alternating wavy and straight golden rays that one finds in Spanish paintings of the period. This could have been a sort of "censorship" introduced to an image considered too frivolous by a subsequent owner particularly respectful of the rules of Catholic doctrine. The changes may well have taken place when the painting was exported to Spain where a more conservative taste existed. If so, then this possibility would link the picture with its earliest known Spanish provenance.
The motif of the Virgin and Child was introduced into a different landscape in a slightly smaller painting by a follower of Jan Massys in the Collection of Brita Marcus (Stockholm, Sweden). This suggests that drawings of popular motifs and patterns or cartoons for their transfer were readily available in Massys’s workshop and were perhaps more widely circulated. Evidence of this is found in The Met’s painting as well where infrared reflectography revealed a possible grid system used to transfer a smaller-scale design of the motif of the Virgin and Child to the large panel (see Technical Notes). Furthermore, a stencil or cartoon may have been used for the clusters of grapes. Such details of working procedure provide clues to Massys’s efforts to employ methods that would facilitate the efficient production of popular compositions for both private clients and open market sales.
Maryan W. Ainsworth and Maria Clelia Galassi 2020
[1] Ph. Rombouts and Th. Van Lerius,
Liggeren andere Historische Archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, vol. 1, Antwerp, 1872, p. 234.
[2] M. J. Friedländer,
Die Altniederländische Malerei, Anthonis Mor und Seine Zeitgenossen, Leiden, 1936, pp. 24–32; M. J. Friedländer,
Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 13,
Antonis Mor and His Contemporaries, Leyden-Brussels, 1975, pp. 17–20, 75–77, 109–10; Leo van Puyvelde,
La peinture flamande au siècle de Bosch et Brueghel, Brussels, 1962; Luis Reyes-Santos, “Jan Quinten Massys, Discipulo e colaborador de seu pai mestre Quinten Metsys,” in
Belas Artes 20 (1964).
[3] Leontine Buijnsters-Smets,
Jan Massys Een Antwerps schilder uit de zestiende eeuw, Zwolle, 1995.
[4] Larry Silver,
The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné, Montclair, 1984, pp. 222–31.
[5] Silver 1984, p. 78, pl. 58; p. 79, pl. 63; and p. 81, pl. 68.
[6] Reis-Santos 1964; Villy Schaf, “Ioannes Qvintini Massiis Pingebat,” in
Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de lArt, offerts au professeur Jacques Lavalleye, Leuven, 1970, pp. 259–80.
[7] Buijnsters-Smets 1995, pp. 158–59, nos. 5, 5a.
[8] M.C.Galassi, “Copies of prototypes by Quentin Massys from the workshop of his son Jan: the case of the Butter Madonna,” in E.Hermens ed.,
European Paintings 15th–18th Century: Copying, Replicating, and Emulating London, 2014, pp. 12–18.
[9] This is consistent with dendrochronology carried out by Peter Klein (report of May 30, 2014, European Paintings archive files). An earliest felling date can be derived for the year 1517, with a more plausible felling date of 1521..1523….1527 +x. With a minimum of two years for seasoning an earliest creation of the painting is possible from 1519 upward. With a median of fifteen sapwood rings and two years for seasoning a creation is plausible from 1525 upward.
[10] For a long time scholars believed the
Susanna and the Elders now in the Phoebus Foundation collection was dated 1556. In reality, the date is partially erased and we can only read clearly the first number, a 1. Maria Galassi personally examined the painting and now dates it to around 1537–40.
[11] Giorgio Faggin first called the landscape artist the Master of the Lille Sermon in
La Pitura ad Anversa nel cinquecento, Florence, 1968, p. 41 n. 34. The same landscape painter seems to have painted the background in another
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Paris art market J. Lupu, 1990; European Paintings archive files). See Serck 1990, pp. 1183–1240, for the group of paintings that he associates with this landscape specialist.
[12] Galassi’s study is in preparation for a book to be published by Brepols, Turnhout, entitled
Jan Massys (c.1510–1573): A Renaissance Painter of the Flemish Beauty.
