The Story of Brussels

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

Quentin Metsys

Quentin Metsys, the son of old Josse Metsys, the metal worker of Louvain, was born in that city in 1466. Like his elder brother, Josse II., whose acquaintance we have already made, he was a man of many parts. By trade, of course, he was a painter, but he by no means confined himself to this craft; he made designs for wrought iron, and carried them out too—witness the exquisite well cover by the great porch of Antwerp Cathedral. He was also an accomplished musician, busied himself with wood engraving, and dabbled, it is said, with some success in Flemish letters.

It was doubtless as his father's assistant that he learned how to forge iron; and there is a romantic story that before he became a painter he was himself a metal worker by profession, and only relinquished this calling for the sake of the woman he loved, whose father would never consent to her marriage with a smith—a most improbable tale, for in the days of Quentin's youth the craftsman who wielded the hammer was quite as good a man as the craftsman who handled the brush.

Molanus asserts that Quentin Metsys was a pupil of Roger van der Weyden—manifestly an error, for the latter died two years before Quentin was born. It is perfectly possible, however, that he was the pupil of Roger's son, Peter van der Weyden. However this may be, he must have completed his apprenticeship before 1491, for at this time he was already inscribed in the Guild of Saint Luke at Antwerp, and seems to have already made for himself a certain reputation, for when we first hear of him at Antwerp he was married and settled in a house of his own in the Rue des Tanneurs. None of his works, however, of this period have come down to us. The earliest of his authentic pictures which we possess—the 'Burial of Christ,' now in the Antwerp Gallery—was not painted till 1508, and the next—the 'Legend of Saint Anne,' now at Brussels (No. 38)—dates from the following year; it is signed on the third panel, 'Quinte Metsys schreef dit, 1509.' These two grand triptyches are undoubtedly his chefs-d'œuvre. The first was painted for the Carpenters' Company of Antwerp, the second for the Confraternity of Saint Anne at Louvain. They are remarkable, like all the earlier works of this painter, for the delicacy of their execution, their elaborate detail, their strange luminous tints. Though Quentin's palette was a rich and varied one, his pictures have not the same mellow glow as the pictures of several of his predecessors—of those of Dierick Boudts, for example; and if his figures are less stiff than theirs, they are also less spiritual. He stands, as it were, at the parting of the ways; his creations, indeed, reflect the sublime beauty of Hubert van Eyck, of Memling, of Roger van der Weyden, but at the same time, they seem to foreshadow the voluptuous spendoursplendour of Rubens and of Jacques Jordaens.

Quentin Metsys did not confine himself to sacred subjects. He portrayed also intimate scenes of civil life—merchants in their counting-houses, bankers, money-changers, and so forth. The most famous of

THE WINGS OF THE SAINT ANNE TRIPTYCH BY QUENTIN METSYS, IN THE BRUSSELS GALLERY.
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these works is in the Louvre; it was painted in 1519. In this kind of painting, however, he had many imitators, and most of the tableaux de genre attributed to him are not his. He also excelled in portraiture. One of his best patrons for works of this kind was Peter Œgidius, whose likeness he painted several times. One of these Peter presented to Sir Thomas More, along with a likeness of their friend Erasmus, also Quentin's work, and More acknowledged the gift in a set of Latin verses. 'If future ages,' he said 'retain the least taste for the fine arts, if hateful Mars does not triumph over Minerva, what will not be the price of these pictures in days to come.' They are possibly still in existence. The portraits of Erasmus and Œgidius in the Longford Gallery, near Salisbury, formerly attributed to Holbein, are now generally ascribed to Quentin Metsys, and the portrait of Erasmus at Hampton Court, and that of Œgidius at Antwerp, are now also commonly believed to be his work. 'Si ce ne sont pas les originaux,' notes M. A.-J. Wauters, 'ce sont deux excellentes copies du temps.'[42]

Quentin Metsys was twice married, and he was the father of thirteen children, of whom at least two, John and Corneille, followed his calling, and are represented in the Brussels Gallery. He seems to have been socially inclined, and as he earned a considerable income, and his second wife was rich, notwithstanding his large family he was able to entertain his friends, amongst them Œgidius, Erasmus, More, Albert Dürer, Holbein, Luke Leyden. He was still a comparatively young man when he died at his own house at Antwerp in 1530. They laid him to rest in the cathedral, hard by the great porch, and a hundred years after his death the city erected a sumptuous monument to his memory, which has long since disappeared. He was the last of the Flemish masters who to the end remained faithful to the traditions of the old national school.