Frans Mostaert (1528–1560) was a Flemish

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

painter specializing in landscape paintings.Frans Mostaert
at the

Netherlands Institute for Art History The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

Life

Frans Mostaert - Landscape with the Good Samaritan

Frans Mostaert was born in

Hulst Hulst () is a municipality and city in southwestern Netherlands in the east of Zeelandic Flanders. History Hulst received city rights in the 12th century. Hulst was captured from the Spanish in 1591 by Maurice of Orange but was recaptured b ...

. The early biographer

Karel van Mander Karel van Mander (I) or Carel van Mander I (May 1548 – 2 September 1606) was a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembe ...

states in his early 1605

Schilder-boeck or is a book written by the Flemish writer and painter Karel van Mander first published in 1604 in Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, where van Mander resided. The book is written in 17th-century Dutch and its title is commonly translated into Engl ...

that Frans Mostaert was the son of a ''common painter'', the twin brother of the painter

Gillis Mostaert Gillis Mostaert the Elder (27 or 28 November 1528 – 28 December 1598) was a Flemish Renaissance painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp in the second half of the 16th century.

and the grandson of the painter

Jan Mostaert Jan Mostaert (c. 1475 – 1552/1553) was a Dutch Renaissance painter who is known mainly for his religious subjects and portraits. One of his most famous creations was the ''Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America''. There are ve ...

.Frans en Gillis Mostart
in:

, '' Het Schilder-Boeck'', Haarlem, 1604 While his brother Gillis studied landscape painting with Jan Mandijn, Frans became a pupil of the landscape painter

Herri met de Bles Herri met de Bles, also known as Henri Blès, Herri de Dinant, Herry de Patinir, and ''il Civetta'' (c. 1490 – after 1566), was a Flemish Northern Renaissance and Mannerist landscape painter, native of Bouvignes or Dinant (both in present-day B ...

. Van Mander states that both brothers joined the Antwerp

Guild of Saint Luke The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was ide ...

in 1555. This may be one of the many errors of van Mander since Frans received a registered pupil in 1553. It is therefore more likely that he became a master in the Guild earlier.''De liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche sint Lucasgilde van 1453-1615'', edited and published by Ph. Rombouts and Th. van Lerius, Antwerp, 1872-1876, p. 184 Frans Mostaert was the teacher of

Jan Soens Jan Soens (; c. 1547 – c. 1611), also known as Giovanni Sons, was a Dutch painter from 's-Hertogenbosch. Biography According to Karel van Mander he moved to Antwerp to live with a schoolmaster named Jacob Boon, whereupon he taught himself the ...

, Adriaen Rebbens and

Bartholomeus Spranger Bartholomeus Spranger or Bartholomaeus SprangerBartholomeus Spranger
at the

. He died of the plague in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

, after his new pupil

Bartholomeus Spranger Bartholomeus Spranger or Bartholomaeus SprangerBartholomeus Spranger
at the

had been with him only for a few weeks.

Work

Frans Mostaert died young. Only very few of his works survive and only one is signed. This is the picture ''Landscape with the Good Samaritan'' in the

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (Dutch: ''Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen'', ''KMSKA'') is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, founded in 1810, that houses a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the fourteenth t ...

. A second work that has traditionally been attributed to Frans Mostaert is (was) in the

Alte Pinakothek The Alte Pinakothek (, ''Old Pinakothek'') is an art museum located in the Kunstareal area in Munich, Germany. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses a significant collection of Old Master paintings. The name Alte (Old) Pinak ...

, Munich. Christie's sold (14 November 2007 in Amsterdam, lot 60) the picture ''A river landscape with a town, a palace and a church'', which it attributed to Frans Mostaert based on its similarities in style and technique with the compositions found in museums. All of Frans Mostaert's known works are landscapes. Although he did not study under Patinir, he can be regarded as a follower of Patinir in that he combined realistic and topographical aspects of the landscape with a heroic aspect as shown in the mountain ranges.Paul Huys Janssen, Koenraad Brosens, 'Panorama op de wereld : het landschap van Bosch tot Rubens', Waanders, Zwolle, 2001

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mostaert, Frans Flemish Renaissance painters Flemish landscape painters Flemish history painters Painters from Antwerp People from Hulst 1528 births 1560 deaths