Antwerp became the principal centre of the Flemish school which was gradually won over to Italianism. Quentin Massys (1465/66-1530) and the landscape painter Joachim Patenier (d. 1524) were the first representatives. With the painters of the Dutch school, Jacob Quentin Massys (1465/66-1530) and the landscape painter Cornelisz of Amsterdam, Cornelis Engelbrechtsz (d. 1533) and his pupil Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533), who admired Dürer, they bring about the transition from Gothic Mannerism to the Renaissance. The latter, as an evolution of northern humanism, prospered first in court circles: on the south, at Mechelen and in Brussels with Bernard van Orley (1488-1541), Jan Gossart, called Mabuse (1478-1536), the Dutchman Jan Mostaert, then Michiel Coxcie, a follower of Raphael; in the north, at Utrecht and Middelburg where Gossaert also worked, who joined Jan van Scorel (1495-1562), the best of the Dutch Romanists. Blondeel of Bruges expressed in painting the decorative fantasy of the Flemish Renaissance architecture, and features among the Mannerists with Jan Massys of Antwerp (d. 1575), who represented the school of Fontainebleau. Lambert Sustris of Amsterdam worked with Titian in Venice. The Romanising taste engendered a scholarly Mannerism, the exponents of which were: at Haarlem, Maerten van Heemskerck (d. 1574), pupil of Scorel; at Liége, Lambert Sustris (died 1566), a follower of Gossaert; at Antwerp, Frans Floris (1516-1570). In the last third of the century, the best pupils of Floris, Marten de Vos and Ambrosius Francken, Otto Venius and painters from Haarlem and Utrecht became eclectic, a trend which itinerant Netherlands artists of international culture helped to establish: Friedrich Sustris, son of Lambert and Bartholomeus Spranger.
Portrait painting was practised by the majority of the masters and by specialists such as the Flemish Willem and Adriaen Key, Pieter and Frans Pourbus the Elder, and the Netherlanders Dirk Jacobsz, Dirk Barentsz and Cornelis Ketel (who invented the Doelenstukken or company pieces, collective portraits of civil guards); they were all eclipsed by Anthonis Mor (1519-1576) of Utrecht, court painter to the Spanish Netherlands. His amalgam of Titianesque grandeur and Dutch sense of character profoundly affected the development of the court portrait.
In the great tradition of northern realism was Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569), the most important satirist in the Netherlands and one of the greatest landscape painters, who was trained in Antwerp and traveled to Italy (1552), where he associated with Giulio Clovio; linked with the humanists Ortelius the geographer and Plantin the publisher, who worked in Antwerp, then in Brussels. His son Pieter (1564-1638) known as Hell Bruegel and his grandson Pieter III (1589-?) imitated his style.
A number of genre painters were produced by the school of Antwerp: Marinus van Reymerswale, Jan van Hemessen (d. about 1563), established in Haarlem, Pieter Aertsen of Amsterdam (1508-1575) and his nephew Joachim Beuckelaer. Landscape painting was characteristically Flemish, with Heri met de Bles and Jacob Grimmer; afterwards the Valckenborgh and Gillis van Coninxloo, who moved to Frankfurt; the Brill and Velvet Bruegel (Jan Bruegel the Elder) who worked in Rome; Joos de Momper and Rubens' first master, Tobias Verhaecht. Following Hans Bol and Gillis van Coninxloo, their compatriots David Vinckeboons and Roelandt Savery introduced landscape painting in Amsterdam and Utrecht.
View some characteristic images from the 16th century.