But the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no successful result. Being based on no inherent want on the part of their own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and violence in attitude. The pictures of this class, even of religious subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable.
The most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. As in every other respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of their principal pictures.
The first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before mentioned, Jan Mabuse. After the large Adoration of the Kings in the National Gallery the most important picture of his pre-Italian period is the Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane at Berlin. Nearly all his works subsequent to 1512, by which time he had settled in Brussels, are characterised by all the faults above mentioned. Their redeeming quality is their masterly treatment. Among those of religious subjects the smallest are as a rule the best. The Ecce Homo at Antwerp, so frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly modelling and vigorous colour. He is less successful with his life-size Adam and Eve, of which there are repetitions at Brussels, Hatfield, Hampton Court and Berlin. But his most unpleasing efforts are the mythological subjects such as the Danaë at Munich, and the Neptune and Amphitrite at Berlin. On the other hand, his portraits are attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his acquired mannerisms of style Four of these are in the National Gallery, and the Girl weighing Gold Pieces, in the Berlin gallery, is also worthy of mention.
Bernard van Orley, born at Brussels in 1471, is characterised in the catalogue of the National Gallery as "taking his place after Massys and Mabuse on the downward slope of Netherlandish painting." He has been immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by Albert Dürer which is now in the Dresden Gallery. He was Court painter to Margaret of Austria, Governess of the Low Countries, and retained the same post under her successor, Mary of Hungary. He is said to have visited Rome in 1509, and there made the acquaintance of Raphael, whose influence is certainly apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the Holy Family in the Louvre. A more Netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is the Pietà in the Gallery at Brussels.
Ian Scorel, born in 1495, was a pupil of Mabuse, and appears to have been the first to introduce the Italian style into his native country—Holland. When on a pilgrimage to Palestine he happened to pass through Rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity as Adrian VI., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer of the art treasures of the Vatican. Returning to Utrecht, where he died, he painted the picture of the Virgin and Child, with donors, which is now in the Town Hall.
A fine portrait by Scorel of Cornelius Aerntz van der Dussen is in the Berlin Gallery.
The decided and strongly realistic style in which Quentin Massys had painted scenes from common life, as for instance the Misere or Money Changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of similar subjects. First among these was his son, Jan Massys, born about 1500, who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition. More interesting were the Breughels, namely, Pieter Breughel the elder, born about 1520, called Peasant Breughel, and his two sons Pieter and Jan. Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good examples of his various subjects, notably a Crucifixion and The Tower of Babel—both dated 1563—and secular scenes like A Peasant Wedding and a Fight between Carnival and Lent, which are full of clever and droll invention.
His elder son, Pieter, was called Hell Breughel, from his choice of subject. He is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother Jan, called Velvet Breughel, born in 1568. Though more especially a landscape painter, Jan also takes an important place in the development of subject pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality, are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more accomplished productions of Teniers, Ostade, and Brouwer.
It is in portrait painting, however, that the Netherlandish School chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of painting would have been more than beneficial. But portrait painters have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish, talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside their own country.
Typical of these is Joos van Cleef, of Antwerp, who died in 1540. According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be assigned to him with any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his time—the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp. His style may be classed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.