Quentin Massys was born in Louvain in 1466, according to legend, into a blacksmith’s family. He probably studied with Albert Bouts. In 1491 he joined the Antwerp guild of artists and opened his own workshop. He worked in Antwerp until his death in 1530. The famous biographer of 16th-century artists, Karel van Mander, tells the following story. According to an old Antwerp custom, before Lent, monks solemnly went around to all the sick people in the city. A huge candle in a carved or painted frame was usually carried in front of the procession. All the sick people were given carved wooden and painted images of saints. A huge number of them were prepared for this occasion.

Among the sick was Massys, who was then engaged in blacksmithing. He also received such figures. By chance, one of his friends who visited him advised him to take up painting in order to earn recovery through this holy work. “This very insignificant experience immediately revealed his innate abilities,” writes van Mander, “and from then on, full of love and diligence, he devoted himself entirely to painting, in which, thanks to practice, he made great progress in a very short time and to which he remained faithful throughout his long life.” Little is known about the early years of the life of this outstanding master. The early works of Quentin Massys bear a distinct imprint of old traditions.

His first significant work is a triptych dedicated to St. Anne (1507-1509; Brussels, Museum). The painting is dominated by female and child figures, which enhances the lyricism of the work, distinguished by the harmonious balance of composition and coloring; the children are depicted with particular sincerity and gentle humor, behaving very lively and spontaneously. The scenes on the outer sides of the side panels are distinguished by restrained drama.

The images, little developed psychologically, are majestic, the figures are enlarged and closely composed, the space seems compacted. In its open form, the altar is more harmonious – the characters are more freely positioned, and the calm measured rhythm and composition are revealed. The basis of Massys’s concept is the desire to indirectly, most often with the help of artistic and formal means, elevate the image of man.

Massys’s style was formed in the mainstream of the Dutch tradition; later he was influenced by such artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer. His clients were Dutch guilds and religious brotherhoods, the Danish king and humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Portuguese monasteries.

Massys’s work absorbed the great traditions of Dutch art and the new influences of the Italian Renaissance, embodied in a variety of genres and themes, and the colorfulness of human characters. In his first dated works – the triptych “Altarpiece of St. Anne” (1507-09) and the altarpiece “Lamentation of Christ” (1508-11) Massys continues the traditions of J. van Eyck in the harmonious balance and lyricism of images.

Massys also worked with Patinir, he painted several small details in his landscapes, included in the altarpiece Temptation of St. Anthony (1515-1524, Madrid, Prado). Massys’s portrait diptych with the image of Erasmus of Rotterdam (Rome, Corsini Gallery) and Peter Gillis (Egidius) (Radnor, Salisbury Collection), created for Thomas More in 1517, reveals not only his skill as a portraitist, but also his spiritual closeness to the humanists. The artist created a new pictorial subject in the portrait genre: we see the image of a scientist at work in a study setting, where every object has spiritual significance.

Genre scenes and portraits make up one of the important parts of Massys’s work. The master’s most famous genre painting, “The Money Changer with His Wife” (1514), depicts an everyday scene, where greed and avarice reign, in an extremely expressive and precise manner, with irony. It illustrates the inscription on the original frame of the painting: “Let the scales be true and the weight accurate.”