Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/652

Rh 620 M A S M A S MASSYS, or MATSYS, QUINTIN (1466-1530), was born at Louvain, where lie first learned a mechanical art. During the greater part of the 15th century the centres in which the painters of the Low Countries most congregated were Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels. Towards the close of the same period Louvain took a prominent part in giving employment to workmen of every craft. It was not till the opening of the 16th century that Antwerp usurped the lead which it afterwards maintained against Bruges and Ghent, Brussels, Mechlin, ami Louvain. Quintin Massys was one of the first men of any note who gave repute to the guild of Antwerp. A legend still current relates how the smith of Louvain was induced by affection for the daughter of an artist to change his trade and acquire proficiency in painting. A less poetic but perhaps more real version of the story tells that Quintin had a brother with whom he was brought up by his father Josse Massys, a smith, who held the lucrative offices of clockmaker and architect to the municipality of Louvain. It came to be a question which of the sons should follow the paternal business, and which carve out a new profession for himself. Josse the son elected to succeed his father, and Quintin then gave himself to the study of painting. But it is not improbable that as he lived in an age when single individuals were cunning in various branches of design, Quintin was equally familiar with the chisel and file or the brush and pencil. We are not told expressly from whom Quintin learned the profession in which he acquired repute, but his style seems necessarily derived from the lessons of Dierick Bouts, who took to Louvain the mixed art of Memling and Van der Weyden. When he settled at Antwerp, at the age of twenty-five, he probably had a style with an impress of its own, which certainly con tributed most importantly to the revival of Flemish art on the lines of Van Eyck and Van der Weyden. What particularly characterizes Quintin Massys is the strong religious feeling which he inherited from earlier schools. But that again was permeated by realism which frequently degenerated into the grotesque. Nor would it be too much to say that the facial peculiarities of the boors of Van Steen or Ostade have their counterparts in the pictures of Massys, who was not, however, trained to use them in the same homely way. From Van der Weyden s example we may trace the dryness of outline and shadeless modelling and the pitiless finish even of trivial detail, from the Van Eycks and Memling through Dierick Bouts the superior glow and richness of transparent pig ments, which mark the pictures of Massys. The date of his retirement from Louvain is 1491, when he became a master in the guild of painters at Antwerp. His most celebrated picture is that which he executed in 15.08 for the joiners company in the cathedral of his adopted city. Next in importance to that is the Maries of Scripture round the Virgin and Child, which was ordered for a chapel in the cathedral of Louvain. Both altar-pieces are now in public museums, one at Antwerp, the other at Brussels. Both challenge attention for the qualities which have already been described. They display great earnestness in expression, great minuteness of finish, and a general absence of effect by light or shade. As in early Flemish pictures, so in those of Massys, superfluous care is lavished on jewellery, edgings, and ornament. To the great defect of want of atmosphere such faults may be added as affectation, the result of excessive straining after tenderness in women, or common gesture and grimace suggested by a wish to render pictorially the brutality of jailers and executioners. Yet in every instance an effort is manifest to develop and express individual character. This tendency in Massys is chiefly illustrated in his pictures of male and female market bankers (Louvre and Windsor), in which an attempt is made to display concentrated cupidity and avarice. The other tendency to excessive emphasis of tenderness may be seen in two replicas of the Virgin and Child at Berlin and Amsterdam, where the ecstatic kiss of the mother is quite unreal. But in these examples there is a remarkable glow of colour which takes us past many defects. Expres sion of despair is strongly exaggerated in a Lucretia at the museum of Vienna. On the whole the best pictures of Massys are the quietest ; his Virgin and Christ or Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa (London and Antwerp) display as much serenity and dignity as seems consistent with the master s art. A telling example of his partiality for gro tesque character in face is an Epiphany in the collection of Mr H. R. Hughes in England. His skill as a portrait painter has not been sufficiently admired, probably because most of his likenesses have ceased to be identified with his name. Egidius at Longford, which drew from Sir Thomas More a eulogy in Latin verse, is but one of a numerous class, to which we may add the portrait of Maximilian of Austria in the gallery of Amsterdam, a masterpiece which at some future period may afford a clue to other works of similar treatment in English and Continental galleries. Massys in this branch of practice was much under the influence of his contemporaries Lucas of Leyden and Mabuse. His tendency to polish and smoothness excluded to some extent the subtlety of modulation remarkable in Holbein and Diirer. There is reason to think that he was well acquainted with both these German masters. He probably met Holbein more than once on his way to England. He saw Diirer at Antwerp in 1520. Quintin died at Antwerp in 1530. The puritan feeling which slumbered in him was fatal to some of his relatives. His sister Catherine and her husband suffered at Louvain in 1543 for the then capital offence of reading the Bible, he being decapitated, she buried alive in the square fronting the cathedral. Quintin s son, Jan Massys, inherited the art but not the skill of his parent. The earliest of his works, a St Jerome, dated 1537, in the gallery of Vienna, the latest, a Healing of Tobias, of 1564, in the museum of Antwerp, are sufficient evidence of his tendency to sub stitute imitation for original thought. MASTER AND SERVANT. These are scarcely to be considered as technical terms in law. The relationship which they imply is created when one man hires the labour of another for a term. Thus it is not constituted by merely contracting with another for the performance of a definite work, or by sending an article to an artificer to be repaired, or engaging a builder to construct a house. Nor would the employment of a man for one definite act of personal service e.g., the engagement of a messenger for a single occasion generally make the one master and the other ser vant. It was held, however, in relation to the offence of em bezzlement, that a drover employed on one occasion to drive cattle home from market was a servant within the statute. (See article EMBEZZLEMENT for definition of &quot; clerk &quot; or &quot;servant&quot; in that connexion.) On the other hand, there are many decisions limiting the meaning of &quot;servants&quot; under wills giving legacies to the class of servants generally. Thus &quot; a person who was not obliged to give his whole time to the master, but was yet in some sense a servant,&quot; was held not entitled to share in a legacy to the servant.&quot;. These cases are, however, interpretations of wills where the intention obviously is to benefit domestic servants only. And so in other connexions questions may arise as to the exact nature of the relations between the parties whether they are master and servant, or principal and agent, or landlord and tenant, or partners, &amp;lt;fec. The terms of the contract of service are for the most part such as the parties choose to make them, but in the absence of express stipulations terms will be implied by the law. Thus, &quot; where no time is limited either expressly or by implication for the duration of a contract of hiring and