Jan van Scorel was a Dutch painter, who played a leading role in introducing aspects of Italian Renaissance painting into Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. He was one of the early painters of the Romanist style who had spent a number of years in Italy, where he thoroughly absorbed the Italian style of painting. His trip to Italy coincided with the brief reign of the only Dutch pope in history, Adrian VI in 1522–23. The pope made him a court painter and superintendent of his collection of antiquities. His stay in Italy lasted from 1518 to 1524 and he also visited Nuremberg, Venice and Jerusalem. Venetian art had an important impact on the development of his style.
Jan Gossaert was a French-speaking painter from the Low Countries also known as Jan Mabuse or Jennyn van Hennegouwe (Hainaut), as he called himself when he matriculated in the Guild of Saint Luke, at Antwerp, in 1503. He was one of the first painters of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting to visit Italy and Rome, which he did in 1508–09, and a leader of the style known as Romanism, which brought elements of Italian Renaissance painting to the north, sometimes with a rather awkward effect. He achieved fame across at least northern Europe, and painted religious subjects, including large altarpieces, but also portraits and mythological subjects, including some nudity.
Frans Floris, Frans Floris the Elder or Frans Floris de Vriendt was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print artist and tapestry designer. He is mainly known for his history paintings, allegorical scenes and portraits. He played an important role in the movement in Northern Renaissance painting referred to as Romanism. The Romanists had typically travelled to Italy to study the works of leading Italian High Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael and their followers. Their art assimilated these Italian influences into the Northern painting tradition.
Michiel Coxie the Elder, Michiel Coxcie the Elder or Michiel van Coxcie, Latinised name Coxius, was a Flemish painter of altarpieces and portraits, a draughtsman and a designer of stained-glass windows, tapestries and prints. He worked for patrons in the principal cities of Flanders. He became the court painter to successively Emperor Charles V and King Philip II of Spain.
Chrispijn van den Broeck was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print designer and designer of temporary decorations. He was a scion of a family of artists, which had its origins in Mechelen and later moved to Antwerp. He is known for his religious compositions and portraits as well as his extensive output of designs for prints. He was active in Antwerp which he left for some time because of the prosecution of persons adhering to his religious convictions.
Abraham Janssens I, Abraham Janssen I or Abraham Janssens van Nuyssen (1575–1632) was a Flemish painter, who is known principally for his large religious and mythological works, which show the influence of Caravaggio. He was the leading history painter in Flanders prior to the return of Rubens from Italy.
Pieter Coecke van Aelst or Pieter Coecke van Aelst the Elder was a Flemish painter, sculptor, architect, author and designer of woodcuts, goldsmith's work, stained glass and tapestries. His principal subjects were Christian religious themes. He worked in Antwerp and Brussels and was appointed court painter to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
Jan Sanders van Hemessen was a leading Flemish Renaissance painter, belonging to the group of Italianizing Flemish painters called the Romanists, who were influenced by Italian Renaissance painting. Van Hemessen had visited Italy during the 1520s, and also Fontainebleau near Paris in the mid 1530s, where he was able to view the work of the colony of Italian artists known as the First School of Fontainebleau, who were working on the decorations for the Palace of Fontainebleau. Van Hemessen's works show his ability to interpret the Italian models into a new Flemish visual vocabulary.
Cornelis Floris or Cornelis (II) Floris De Vriendt was a Flemish sculptor, print artist and architect. He developed a new style, which was informed by Flemish traditions, the 16th century Italian renaissance and possibly the School of Fontainebleau. His innovations spread throughout Northern Europe where they had a major influence on the development of sculpture and architecture in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
Bartholomeus Spranger or Bartholomaeus Spranger was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, sculptor and designer of prints. Working in Prague as a court artist for the Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II, he responded to his patron's aesthetic preferences by developing a version of the extreme style, full of conceits, which has become known as Northern Mannerism. This style stressed sensuality, which was expressed in smoothly modeled, elongated figures arranged in elegant poses, often including a nude woman seen from behind. Spranger's unique style combining elements of Netherlandish painting and Italian influences, in particular the Roman Mannerists, had an important influence on other artists in Prague and beyond as his paintings were disseminated widely through prints.
Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th-century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. These artists, who span from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the 16th century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim Wtewael at the end, drew on both the recent innovations of Italian painting and the local traditions of the Early Netherlandish artists. Antwerp was the most important artistic centre in the region. Many artists worked for European courts, including Bosch, whose fantastic painted images left a long legacy. Jan Mabuse, Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were all instrumental in adopting Italian models and incorporating them into their own artistic language. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, with Bosch the only artist from the period to remain widely familiar, may seem atypical, but in fact his many innovations drew on the fertile artistic scene in Antwerp.
Frans Pourbus the Elder was a Flemish Renaissance painter who is known primarily for his portraits and religious compositions, as well as a few genre scenes. He was the son of the prominent Bruges painter and cartographer Pieter Pourbus and the father of Frans Pourbus the Younger who became an international portraitist of the European ruling class.
Hieronymus Cock, or Hieronymus Wellens de Cock was a Flemish painter and etcher as well as a publisher and distributor of prints. Cock is regarded as one of the most important print publishers of his time in northern Europe. His publishing house played a key role in the transformation of printmaking from an activity of individual artists and craftsmen into an industry based on division of labour. His house published more than 1,100 prints between 1548 and his death in 1570, a vast number by earlier standards.
The Antwerp School was a school of artists active in Antwerp, first during the 16th century when the city was the economic center of the Low Countries, and then during the 17th century when it became the artistic stronghold of the Flemish Baroque under Peter Paul Rubens.
Maerten de Vos, Maerten de Vos the Elder or Marten de Vos was a Flemish painter. He is known mainly for his history and allegorical paintings and portraits. He was, together with the brothers Ambrosius Francken I and Frans Francken I, one of the leading history painters in the Spanish Netherlands after Frans Floris career slumped in the second half of the sixteenth century as a result of the Iconoclastic fury of the Beeldenstorm.
Adriaen Thomasz. Key, was a Flemish painter of portraits and religious paintings, a draughtsman and a printmaker. He worked for a while in the Antwerp workshop of the prominent history and portrait painter Willem Key and later took over the workshop. His work was highly regarded in his time for its technical mastery and innovative concepts and thus influenced a later generation of painters including Rubens.
Hans Speckaert, was a Flemish Renaissance painter who was active in Italy. He is known for his portraits, history paintings and his many drawings. The artist was one of the earliest representatives of Northern Mannerism. His fluid and elegant drawing style exerted an important influence on contemporary Northern artists.
Roger de Piles's L'Abrégé de la vie des peintres...avec un traité du peintre parfait, was a major art biography of painters. It was written by the French spy Roger de Piles. In 1692, during the War of the League of Augsburg, he was arrested in the Hague carrying a false passport and imprisoned for the next five years, where he wote his L'Abrégé in 7 parts; 1) Sketch of the perfect painter, 2) Greek painters; 3) Painters from Rome & Florence; 4) Painters from Venice; 5) Painters from Lombardy; 6) Painters from Germany and the Low Countries; 7) Painters from France and ending with his famous "Balance of painters". The book was finally published in 1699 following his appointment as Conseiller Honoraire to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in Paris.
Brussels tapestry workshops produced tapestry from at least the 15th century, but the city's early production in the Late Gothic International style was eclipsed by the more prominent tapestry-weaving workshops based in Arras and Tournai. In 1477 Brussels, capital of the duchy of Brabant, was inherited by the house of Habsburg; and in the same year Arras, the prominent center of tapestry-weaving in the Low Countries, was sacked and its tapestry manufacture never recovered, and Tournai and Brussels seem to have increased in importance.
Raphael Coxie, was a Flemish Renaissance painter mainly known for his portrait and history paintings.
