Wtewael And Christus

Petrus Christus, Virgin and Child in Domestic Interior, c. 1410 - 1475, currently resides in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, one of Christus more famous works that exhibit his Flemish painting style which reputedly introduced geometric perspective into the Netherlands. Centuries later Joachim Anthonisz Wtewael who represented a more extreme version of Northern Mannerism in the late 16th Century painted, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, c.1600 also on exhibit in the Nelson Atkins.

In 1444 Christus became a citizen of Bruges, where he worked until his death. He is believed to have been trained in Jan van Eyck’s studio. His naturalistic mature style, is a simplified adaptation of his supposed master’s style. But some of his motifs and compositions
A stark contrast to Christus stoic doll like figures, Wtewael portrays his figures in complicated twisted poses. However both Christus and Wtewael are able to maintain the same level of detail; with Wtewael being more organic in his piece, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, c.1600. Wtewael worked with his father engraving glass in his native homeland of Utrecht a city in the Netherlands. The Netherlands were under the rule of Spain in his time. Around the age of eighteen he spent two years each in Italy and France, in the company of the bishop of St. Malo, Charles de Bourgneuf de Cucé, where he developed, cultivated and matured his painting style. Wtewael returned to Utrecht at age twenty-five, he became a member of the Saddlemakers' guild, to which painters then belonged. He produced paintings, drawings, engravings, and stained glass windows. Wtewael was one of the last artists in the North painting in the Mannerist style, even after other artists had moved on to a more naturalistic style in the late 1600s, he continued to paint in an artificial style characterized by acidic colors and distorted twisted poses. Wtewael was a man fixed in his ways, it seemed, he managed to remain strongly Catholic during the Protestant Reformation in the church in 1517. Wtewael later had a son, born in 1596 he had a son Peter Wtewael, who became a painter as well. He trained whith Hendrick Goltzius, who was one of its leading advocates of the current mannerism style, in its prime at the time. This style of Italian origin, and was mostly embraced in the Netherlands through indirect sources, such as prints from Italy and inspiration from other foreign works. This explains the specific aesthetically peculiar quality of the Northern Mannerism, compared with Northern Renaissance. The painting The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, where according to tradition Saint