In 1485 the rivalry between Antwerp and Bruges reached the point of open war. The men of Bruges built a fort commanding the River Scheldt at a point near Calloo, mounting on it no less than sixty cannon. The Antwerp burghers met this challenge by building a similar fort at Austruwel, and then attacked and captured the Flemish fort on April 23—St. George’s Day. A yearly procession still commemorates this victory in the long contest to maintain the freedom of the river. A fleet of forty-nine merchant vessels that the Flemings had detained came triumphantly up the river, and the conflict for supremacy between the old sea gateway of the Netherlands and the new was settled once for all—as far as poor Bruges was concerned—in favour of Antwerp, the new maritime queen of the North.
The river itself seemed to favour the prosperity of Antwerp, as if proud and eager to become the handmaiden of so valiant and beautiful a city, for the western entrance of the Scheldt gradually deepened at about this period—from causes that in those days no one tried to understand. This gave the port a deep channel to the sea to accommodate the growing draught of ocean-going ships. The discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama helped the port also. Until then Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of the sugar trade of the East. Now it came sea-borne to Antwerp, and the formerly profitable overland sugar trade between Venice and Germany was ruined. This caused the Portuguese to establish a factory at Antwerp. The Spaniards followed, while the English and Italians enlarged their warehouses. Several great German trading houses opened premises in the city, although the Hanseatic League did not abandon Bruges for Antwerp until 1545—being the very last to go.
While the decline of Bruges led the painters of that city to desert it for its fast-growing rival on the Scheldt, Quentin Matsys, the greatest of the early Antwerp artists, does not seem to have derived much of his inspiration from the masterpieces of the Bruges school. The early chronicles give a most romantic account of the life of this painter, who was born at Louvain about 1466. According to these more or less legendary stories he was at first a blacksmith, and changed to a painter through love for a damsel whose father was a great patron and admirer of that art. Another account has it that he took up painting owing to illness, first colouring images of the saints such as were then given to children during the carnival. Blacksmith he certainly was, as his father had been before him, and the wonderful cover for the well in front of the cathedral is his handiwork. It seems probable, however, that he first learned the art of painting at Louvain, probably as an apprentice to the son of Dierick Bouts. At Antwerp he soon fell in love with a beautiful girl, who may have been the model for some of his charming Madonnas. The story is told by one old chronicler that the maiden’s father opposed the match because the young suitor was not a sufficiently skilful artist. On a certain occasion Matsys, finding his intended father-in-law out, painted a fly on one of the figures in a painting belonging to him. On his return the owner of the painting started to brush the fly off and, seeing his mistake, heartily admitted that the young artist who had painted it merited all praise and gave his consent to the nuptials.
The museum at Antwerp is rich in masterpieces by Matsys, including his greatest work, “The Entombment.” This is a triptych, the panels showing Herod’s banquet with the head of John the Baptist lying on the table, and St. John in the boiling oil. The “Madonna,” in the same museum, is one of the sweetest faces ever painted among the hundreds of Madonnas that abound in mediæval art, and one cannot but feel that it is the very face that won the heart of the artist and caused him to adopt painting as his profession. Its resemblance to the face of the Madonna now in the Berlin museum strengthens this theory. At Antwerp also there are to be seen “The Holy Face,” a companion painting to the “Madonna” just mentioned, and the gruesome yet appealing “Veil of Veronica,” showing the livid face of the Saviour with drops of blood from the cruel crown of thorns trickling down across it. The museum at Brussels possesses another masterpiece, and the oldest dated picture by this artist, “The Legend of St. Anne,” which was completed in 1509 for the brotherhood of St. Anne at Louvain. He also painted several strong and striking portraits, of which the best is that of Erasmus at the Städel Institute at Frankfort. Matsys was one of the first Flemish artists to present subjects of every-day life as well as religious episodes and characters. “The Banker and his Wife,” at the Louvre in Paris, is the finest example of this kind. There are authenticated works by this master in a number of European museums, while a considerable number of his pictures have become lost or have not as yet been identified.
“THE BANKER AND HIS WIFE.”—MATSYS.
Matsys is the greatest name in the history of Flemish art between the masters of Bruges and the school of Rubens. It was his success that made Antwerp the Florence of the North. Among Matsys’ successors Frans de Vriendt, better known as Frans Floris, was one of the most notable. He was a member of the Antwerp guild of St. Luke at the age of twenty-three, and produced a vast number of works, many of which can still be seen scattered among the churches and art collections of Flanders. He had over one hundred pupils, of whom Martin de Vos achieved the greatest fame. As this painter worked after the destruction of the image-breakers many of his religious subjects survive to this day. The Antwerp museum contains no less than twenty-three of his works, as against only four by his master. Both of these artists, however, were profound admirers of the Italian school, and the work of Floris especially—though vastly admired in his day—is now looked upon as more Italian than Flemish, more imitative than original.
This cannot be said of the next really great painter to appear in Flanders, Peter Breughel the Elder. Born at the little village of Breughel, near Breda in Brabant, about 1526, this artist studied for a time in Italy—as did all of his contemporaries—and then settled at Antwerp. Here he obtained the themes of many of his most famous compositions. “In the port, in the tavern, in the fairs of neighbouring villages,” says Prof. A. J. Wauters, “meeting now a young couple in the giddy dance, or a drunkard stumbling in his path, he sought the humble spectacle of homely things, the noisy mirth of rustic festivities, and was always in quest of every-day subjects, which earned for him, at the hands of posterity, the surname of ‘Breughel of Peasants.’” He later removed to Brussels, where he received many commissions, particularly from the Emperor Rudolph II, who greatly admired his work. Several of his chief masterpieces are therefore in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, but the Royal Museum at Antwerp contains four of his works, while several others are scattered about Europe.
“WINTER.”—PETER BREUGHEL.