2-979-589 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Quintin Metsys, The Blacksmith of Antwerp - the Portrait, 1857. Imaginary scene where Master Van Twylt admires a portrait of his daughter Alyt painted by Quentin Matsys (1465-1530), a Flemish painter in the Early Netherlandish tradition. She is depicted '...under the blue mantle and white veil of the Virgin Mother...Martin Van der Goes, one of whose pictures hung near, approached, to find to his disgust that the subject of Van Twylt's admiration was not his own work, but the anonymous head by its side. Quintin, leaning against a pillar hard by, heard and saw all..."And for the price," added Metsys, after the old man's astonishment had subsided into simple admiration, "it is yours without price - on one condition...If I may call myself a suitor for the hand of your fair daughter!"' There is a tradition alleging that Matsys was trained as an ironsmith before becoming a painter. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.