Travel Belgium About Brussels Cranach Gerard David Matsys And Bernard Van Orley
Next door, Room 18 holds works by Martin Luther's friend, the Bavarian artist Lucas Crunch (1472-1553), whose Adam and Eve presents a stylized, Renaissance view of the Garden of Eden with an earnest-looking Adam on the other side of the Tree of Knowledge from a coquettish Eve, painted with legs entwined and her teeth marks visible on the apple. Room 21 displays a couple of panels by Gerard David (1460-1523), a Bruges-based artist whose draughtsmanship may not be of the highest order, but whose paintings do display a tender serenity, as exhibited here in his
Adoration of the Magi and Virgin and Child .
In Room 22 , Quentin Matsys (1465-1530) is well represented by the Triptych of the Holy Kindred . Matsys' work illustrates a turning point in the development of Flemish painting, and in this triptych, which was completed in 1509, Matsys abandons the realistic interiors and landscapes of his Flemish predecessors in favour of the grand columns and porticos of the Renaissance. Notice that each scene is rigorously structured, its characters - all relations of Jesus - assuming lofty, idealized poses.
Room 26 has several works by Bernard van Orley (1488-1541), a long-time favourite of the Habsburg officials in Brussels until his Protestant sympathies put him in the commercial dog house. A versatile artist, Orley produced action-packed paintings of Biblical scenes, often back-dropped by classical buildings in the Renaissance style, as well as cartoon designs for tapestries and stained glass windows. His designs were used for several of the Cathedral's windows. The pick of his paintings displayed here are the
Haneton Triptych , whose crowded central panel is an intense vision of the Lamentation, and
the Triptych of the Virtue of Patience , which tells the tale of Job. At the top of the left-hand panel, Satan challenges God to test Job, his faithful follower. God accepts the challenge and visits calamities on Job - at the bottom of the left-hand panel his sheep are hit by lightning and his animals stolen. Even worse, the fearful central panel shows the roof falling in on Job's family while they are eating and only on the right-hand panel is order restored with God telling Job he has passed the test.
