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The Joiners' Company, for whom he painted the 'Descent from the Cross, sold the picture to the City of Antwerp for five times the original amount, and it is said Queen Elizabeth offered the City nearly twenty times the first sum for it, in vain. Quintin Matsys painted frequently half-length figures of the Virgin and Child, an example of which is in the National Gallery.
It is not a hard stiff structure, but is composed of circular forms, each made separately, and linked together with narrow bands, so that the construction is flexible, and is more like a gigantic piece of chain mail than an iron fence. Quentin Matsys was known as the "blacksmith of Antwerp," and is reported to have left his original work among metals to become a painter.
Not only were two lamps lit on the small bridge, one at each end in the ornate iron scroll work, which Quintin Matsys would not have disavowed, but, overhead, the sky was reddened by the reflection of the thousands of gas jets in the north and west; the gay and spendthrift city was awakening to life and mirth while the working town was going to bed.
She saw at the corner of the square the old cobbler drawing his string with his eternal gesture. He smiled, bearing his sparrow on his shoulder. She went into the shop, and sat on a chair. She said in French: "Quentin Matsys, my friend, what have I done, and what will become of me?" He looked at her quietly, with laughing kindness, not understanding nor caring. Nothing astonished him.
Beneath it is the beautiful and elaborately-wrought framework of iron, representing a pair of gates between two Gothic towers, designed as a screen to the tomb of Edward the Fourth, and which, though popularly attributed to Quentin Matsys, has with more justice been assigned to Master John Tressilian.
There are so many portraits and copies of portraits of Erasmus, not only by Holbein, but by other painters for Erasmus was painted by Albert Dürer and Quintin Matsys, that this special portrait, like the true Holbein family portrait of the More family, remains very much a subject of speculation.
The well is covered with a Gothic canopy surmounted by the figure of a knight in full armor. It is all of metal and proves that Matsys was an artist at the forge as well as at the easel; indeed, his great fame is mainly derived from his miraculous skill as an artificer in iron." Next, mynheer showed the boys some exquisite Berlin castings, which he had purchased in Antwerp.
She saw at the corner of the square the old cobbler drawing his string with his eternal gesture. He smiled, bearing his sparrow on his shoulder. She went into the shop, and sat on a chair. She said in French: "Quentin Matsys, my friend, what have I done, and what will become of me?" He looked at her quietly, with laughing kindness, not understanding nor caring. Nothing astonished him.
It must never be forgotten that all through the sixteenth century, starting from Quentin Matsys, the founder of the Antwerp school, the popular and Flemish tradition remains distinct from the flowery style of the Italianizants.
It is said that he fell in love with the daughter of an artist who refused to allow him to marry her because he was not a painter; for this reason Matsys devoted himself to the study of art, and became the best Belgian master of his time.
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