Frans Floris

Frans Floris de Vriendt I. (* 1517 in Antwerp, † October 1, 1570 in Antwerp) was a Flemish painter and together with his brother, the sculptors and architects Cornelis Floris II, instrumental in the development of the Northern Renaissance.

Biography

Floris should be a sculptor, but then learned to paint with Lambert Lombard in Liege and in 1540 Master in Antwerp. Then he went to his brother Cornelis II to Rome, where both further trained especially under the influence of Michelangelo and Vasari.

Back in Antwerp, he realized that the Italian approach to painting required a new form of production. He built up a studio, which developed after Karel van Mander's Schilder - Boeck to an image factory with over 100 workers and journeymen and sophisticated division of labor. So head studies were created that had to be transferred from the assistants only, hence the sometimes recognizable stereotype of profiles revealed. Soon they called Frans Floris the " Dutch Raphael ", but again this may have been part of his successful self-marketing, to which it also was that his paintings of Hieronymus Cock, Cornelis Cort and Theodor Galle immediately engraved on copper and were thus widespread. His brother Cornelis Floris Frans II built a magnificent house, which was decorated with pictures of the seven liberal arts, however, is not preserved. Alcoholism impaired his increasingly creative power. He died while he was working on a huge crucifixion and resurrection as great a for a Spanish client.

Work

From the very extensive production Frans Floris is not received very much. Some of his pictures were Iconoclasm victim, on the other hand, they were less valued in later times. The influence of Floris is very large and is not to be seen only on aesthetic- stylistic level, but also in the division of labor in production of art. This also huge studio of Peter Paul Rubens is inconceivable without Frans Floris Vorläufertum. Floris loved the huddled body mass, characterized by fairly good knowledge of anatomy, but also tended to stereotype here always the same or similar athletic men back and profiles. Under the influence mainly by Franz Theodor Kugler, who called Floris painting Lot and his daughters as " disgusting ", labeled Kugler's pupil Jacob Burckhardt the fall of the rebellious angels also as " disgusting " - a judgment that is more about the taste of the 19th century, says Frans Floris than. In 1916 was summed up: " It is characterized by lean over for Floris figures and small heads, rich but uninspired pleated antique garments and witty, bold brushwork. In command of Italian design world, it surpasses all his predecessors. Of far-reaching importance for the subsequent period are his loose, broad brushwork, his individual compositional style, and the style of his rare, the individual sharp detected generous portraits. "