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They recalled neither her genius nor her womanly qualities which they had admired, appreciated, and so soon forgotten! <b>OOSTERWYCK, MARIA VAN.</b> The seventeenth century is remarkable for the perfection attained in still-life and flower painting. The most famous masters in this art were William van Aelst of Delft, the brothers De Heem of Utrecht, William Kalf and the Van Huysums of Amsterdam.
His studio being opposite that of Maria, she watched narrowly for the days when he did not work and marked them down on her window-sash. At the close of the year Van Aelst claimed her as his bride, assuming that he had fulfilled her condition; but she pointed to the record of his delinquencies, and he could but accept her crafty dismissal of his suit.
About 1540 Brussels probably stood at the head of the list of cities famous for the production of these costly textiles. The Raphael tapestries were made there, by Peter van Aelst, under the order of Pope Leo X. They were executed in the space of four years, being finished in 1519, only a year before Raphael's death.
Leo X, the great Medicean pope, was elected in 1513, he who ordered the great Raphael set of the Acts of the Apostles, but it was before the establishment of important looms in Italy, so to Flanders and Van Aelst are due the glory of first producing this series which afterward was repeated many times, in the great looms of Europe.
William van Aelst, the painter of exquisite pictures of still-life, fruits, glass, and objects in gold and silver, was a suitor for her hand. She did not love him, but wishing not to be too abrupt in her refusal, she required, as a condition of his acceptance, that he should work ten hours a day during a year. This he readily promised to do.
The guests were seen arriving on foot in the fine weather, some of them accompanied by their wives and daughters, against the light of the low sun, falling red on the old trees of the avenue and the faces of those who advanced along it: Willem van Aelst, expecting to find hints for a flower-portrait in the exotics which would decorate the banqueting-room; Gerard Dow, to feed his eye, amid all that glittering luxury, on the combat between candle-light and the last rays of the departing sun; Thomas de Keyser, to catch by stealth the likeness of Sebastian the younger.
The daughter of a distinguished professor of anatomy, she was born at Amsterdam in 1664. She was for a time a pupil of William van Aelst, but soon studied from nature alone. Some art critics esteem her works superior to those of De Heem and Van Huysum.
The famous Peter or Pierre van Aelst, selected from all of Flanders' able craftsmen to work for Raphael and the Pope, was born in this little town, wove here and, more yet, was known as Pierre of Enghien. Yet it is the larger town of Brussels which wore his laurels. The Enghien town marks are an easy adaptation of the arms of the place, and the weavers' marks are generally monograms.
When Van Aelst had finished his magnificent work, the tapestries were sent to Rome. Those who go now to the Sistine Chapel to gaze upon Michael Angelo's painted ceiling, and the panelled sidewalls of Botticelli and other cotemporary artists, are more than intoxicated with the feast.
His works were of such a nature that, like those of Van Aelst, who had no mark, they would always be known for their historic association. And it is a matter of Spanish history that the great Emperor Charles V carried in his train the court artist, Van Orley, that his exploits be pictured for the gratification of himself and posterity.
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