Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain03cham).pdf/239

 MASSONE, GIOVANNI, of Alessandria, about 1490. Genoese school; painted in 1490, in mortuary family chapel erected at Savona by Sixtus IV., an altarpiece in three compartments, representing the Nativity in the middle, with St. Francis and Pope Sixtus on one side, and St. Anthony of Padua and Cardinal Giuliano di Rovere, the pope's nephew, afterwards Julius II., on the other. It is now in the Louvre, having been bought for Louis XVIII. for 3,000 francs.—Villot, Cat. Louvre; Ch. Blanc, École génoise; Lanzi, iii. 234.

MASSYS (Matsys, Messys, Metsys), JAN, born in Antwerp about 1509, died before Oct. 8, 1575. Flemish school; son and pupil of Quinten, whose realistic style and subjects he imitated, degenerating, however, into coarser treatment and, into great feebleness in every respect, especially in his later pictures. Free of Antwerp guild in 1531. Was exiled for heresy in 1544, but returned to Antwerp a few years later. Works: The Misers (copy of Quinten), Windsor Castle; Men and Women playing Cards, Wyndham Collection, Petworth; The Virgin and St. Joseph refused Shelter at Bethlehem (1558), Healing of Tobias (1564), Antwerp Museum; Danaë, Rotterdam Museum; Chaste Susanna, Lot and his Daughters (1565), Brussels Museum; David and Bathsheba, Louvre; Tax Collectors, Berlin Museum; do., Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta (1565), Carlsruhe Gallery; The Two Moneychangers (1551), Leipsic Museum; St. Paul (1565), Sclileissheim Gallery; St. Jerome (1537), Jolly Company and Bag-*piper (1564), Lot and his Daughters (1563), Vienna Museum; The Saviour, The Virgin in Contemplation, Madrid Museum; Bathsheba, Stockholm Museum.—Kugler (Crowe), i. 247; Kramm, iv. 1073; Riegel, Beiträge, i. 22; ii. 14; Rooses (Reber), 91; Van den Branden, 188; Merlo, Nachrichten, 289.

MASSYS, QUINTEN, born in Antwerp before 1460, died there between July 13 and Sept. 16, 1530. Flemish school; history, genre, and portrait painter, perhaps pupil of Dierick Bouts. The current story of his having begun life as a blacksmith, and turned to art in order to win a painter's daughter for his wife, is not well authenticated. What we know is, that he married about 1480, and again in 1508-9; that he entered the painters' guild at Antwerp in 1491, lived there mostly, and perhaps at Louvain temporarily; and that his friends were Egidius, Erasmus, and Dürer. While the painters of the Van Eyck school had for the most part painted figures of small size, Massys painted them of life-size, showing in his treatment of religious subjects an intense and sometimes exaggerated sentiment. His flesh tones are clear, his draperies harmonious in colour, and his execution is careful and elaborate. His style, which marks the close of the early Flemish school and inaugurates a new period, is distinguished by more independence of thought and greater artistic freedom than that of any previous painter in the Low Countries, excepting the Van Eycks. Works: Triptych with Legend of St. Ann (1509), Brussels Museum; Triptych with Pietà (1508-11), Bust Figures of Christ and the Virgin, Magdalen, Tax Collector, Antwerp Museum; Money-Changer and his Wife (1518), Descent from the Cross (attributed), Louvre; Bust Figures of Christ and the Virgin, National Gallery, London; Death of Lucretia, Berne Museum; Madonna, St. Jerome, Portrait of a Young Man, Museum, Berlin; Madonna with the Lamb, Raczynski Gal