Frans Floris

The Awakening of the Arts

Frans Floris was born in Antwerp. He was the scion of a prominent artist family which originally went with the name ‘de Vriendt’. The earliest known ancestors of the Floris de Vriendt family, then still called only ‘de Vriendt’, were residents of Brussels where they practiced the craft of stonemason and stonecutter which was passed on from father to son. One of Frans' ancestors became in 1406 a master of the Brussels stonemasons guild. A family member, Jan Florisz. de Vriendt, left his native Brussels and settled in Antwerp in the mid-15th century. His patronymic name ‘Floris’ became the common family name in subsequent generations. The original form ‘de Vriendt’ can, however, still be found in official documents until the late 16th century.[5]

Frans' brothers were prominent artists. The most famous one is Cornelis who was an architect and sculptor and was one of the designers of the Antwerp City Hall. Jacob Floris was a painter of stained-glass windows and Jan Floris was a potter.[5] Jan traveled to Spain to practice his art there and died young.

Portrait of an elderly lady

Documentary evidence about the life of Frans Floris is scarce. Most of what we know about the youth and training of Frans Floris is based on the early biographer Karel van Mander's biography of the artist. At ten pages long it is one of the most detailed biographies in van Mander's Het Schilder-boeck published in 1604. According to van Mander, Frans Floris was the son of the stonecutter Cornelis I de Vriendt (died 1538). Like his brothers, Frans began as a student of sculpture, but later he gave up sculpture for painting. Floris went to Liège where he studied with the prominent painter Lambert Lombard. The choice for Lombard as a teacher was surprising since Antwerp was a cultural centre with many outstanding painters. He may have chosen Lombard as his brother Cornelis was good friends with Lombard, whom he had met in Rome around 1538. It is also possible that Frans trained as a painter in Antwerp before studying under Lombard. Floris became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1539–40.[4]

Lombard encouraged Frans Floris to study in Italy. He traveled to Rome probably as early as 1541 or 1542 and became fascinated with Italian contemporary painting (particularly Michelangelo and Raphael) and the Classical sculpture and art of Rome. He kept a notebook of sketches, which his pupils would later etch. Floris visited other cities in Italy including Mantua and Genoa.[4]

The Fall of Man

Upon his return to Antwerp around 1545, Frans Floris opened a workshop on the Italian model.[4] He became the leading history painter and was called the ‘Flemish Raphael’. He enjoyed the patronage of prominent personalities such as the wealthy Antwerp banker Niclaes Jonghelinck for whose house he painted a series of ten compositions on the legend of Hercules and seven compositions on the liberal arts. He also painted 14 large panels for the duke of Aarschot's palace of Beaumont. Local nobility including the knights of the Golden Fleece, the Prince of Orange and the Counts of Egmont and Horn (later the leaders of the Dutch Revolt) visited Floris at his home, attracted by his artistic reputation as well as his ability to talk with ‘great insight and judgment on any topic’.[6] He also moved in the circle of the leading humanists such as Abraham Ortelius, Christophe Plantin, Lucas de Heere, Lambert Lombard, Dominicus Lampsonius and Hieronymus Cock. This group of intellectuals and artists was the first to develop theories on art and the role of artists in the Low Countries.[7] In 1549 Floris was commissioned by the Antwerp city authorities to design the decorations for the Joyous entry into Antwerp of Charles V of Spain and the Infante Philip.[4]

The Last Judgement

His brother Cornelis designed a palace for him in Antwerp with a façade of blue limestone and with luxurious decorations such as gilded leather wall-coverings in the bedroom.[8] The façade itself was designed by Frans. His design program for the façade was intended to illustrate the high status of artists in society. He painted the façade with seven personifications symbolizing the qualities and skills of an artist: Accuracy (Diligentia), Practice (Usus), Labor (Labor), Diligence (Industria), Experience (Experientia), Praise (Lauda) and Architecture (Architectura). Above the doorway of the house a relief depicted the sciences (the seven liberal arts together with painting and architectures) as the principal components of human society. The unknown monogrammist TG portrayed the façade in 1576 in a print.[9] Jozef Linnig made a drawing of the palace in the 19th century but by that time most of the decoration of the façade had disappeared. Floris expressed similar ideas in his composition The awakening of the Arts (Museo de Arte de Ponce).[10]

In 1547 Floris married Clara Boudewijns and the couple had one daughter and two sons. The sons Frans and Baptist were later trained as artists by their father. Baptist died young while Frans moved to Italy where he had a successful career.[6]

The house of Frans Floris by Jozef Linnig, Plantin-Moretus Museum

Frans Floris was known to be hardworking as is testified by his motto: Als ick werck, dan leef ick: als ick spelen gae, dan sterf ick. This means "When I work, I live: when I play, I die." Van Mander recounts that Floris nearly always had a large commission in his workshop on which he would work late at night, and that when he dozed off his pupils would take off his shoes and stockings and put him to bed before they left. Van Mander cites Frans Menton who asserted Floris was loved by his pupils for allowing them more freedom than other Antwerp masters. When a small group of his pupils met up for a reunion after his death they were able to compile a list of 120 of his pupils.[11]

Van Mander recounts that at the end of his life Floris became heavily indebted and started drinking.[8] The debts were likely related to his high costs of living as well as the impact of the Beeldenstorm or Iconoclastic Fury that commenced from the 1560s and reached its peak in 1566. During the period of iconoclasm, Catholic art and many forms of church fittings and decoration were destroyed by nominally Calvinist Protestant crowds as part of the Protestant Reformation. It is said Floris never recovered from the shock of seeing his artworks destroyed. Instead, he found himself in a downward spiral in both his personal and professional affairs. His disaffection was so great that he even refused to restore his own works damaged during the Beeldenstorm. He virtually stopped painting after 1566 and his place as the leading history painter in the Habsburg Netherlands was taken by a younger generation of artists among whom Marten de Vos became the most prominent.[12]

Van Mander recounts that while working on a large commission for the grand prior of Spain, Floris became ill and died on 1 October 1570 in Antwerp. His paintings for the grand prior were finished by his studio assistants Frans Pourbus the Elder and Chrispijn van den Broeck. Poems were written about him by Dominicus Lampsonius and the poet-painter Lucas de Heere, who according to van Mander, was his pupil.[8]

Floris' friend the painter Rijckaert Aertsz as Saint Luke. Floris himself models the pigment grinder

The Netherlands Institute for Art History identifies the following pupils of Frans Floris: Joos de Beer (later the teacher of Abraham Bloemaert), George Boba, Hendrick van den Broeck, Marten van Cleve, Ambrosius Francken, Frans Francken I, Frans Menton (known for schutterstukken in Alkmaar), and Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg.[2] Van Mander lists 26 pupils of Floris, but he may have had as many as 120 assistants. Van Mander's list includes Chrispijn van den Broeck, Joris van Ghent (who served Philip II of Spain), Marten (and his brother Hendrick) van Cleve, Lucas de Heere, Anthonie Blocklandt van Montfoort, Thomas van Zirickzee, Simon van Amsterdam, Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg (spelled Isaack Claessen Cloeck), Frans Menton, George Boba, the three Francken brothers Jeroen, Frans and Ambrosius, Joos de Beer, Hans de Maier van Herentals, Apert Francen van Delft, Lois van Brussel, Thomas van Coelen, Hans Daelmans van Antwerpen, Evert van Amersfoort, Herman van der Mast, Damiaen van der Goude, Jeroen van Vissenaken, Steven Croonenborgh uyt den Hage, and Dirck Verlaen van Haerlem.[8]

The long list of pupils and assistants shows that Frans Floris had upon his return to Antwerp adopted the studio practices that he had witnessed in Italy. He relied on a large number of assistants who came from all over the southern and northern Netherlands and even Germany. Floris invented and developed the use of study heads, which were life-size representations of people's heads, which he painted in oil on panel. These were then given to his assistants, either for literal transcription or for freer adaptations. His assistants' role is not always clear and may have ranged from painting after his study heads to adding landscape backgrounds. They also copied his compositions, either in paint or on paper, for reproduction by engravers.[4]

• Jeroen Vandommele, 'Als in een spiegel, Vrede, kennis en gemeenschap op het Antwerpse Landjuweel van 1561', Hilversum (in Dutch)
• Edward H. Wouk, Frans Floris’s Allegory of the Trinity (1562) and the Limits of Tolerance, Art History 10/2014; 38(1), p. 39-76

• Liedtke , Walter A. (1984). Flemish paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0870993569. (see index: Floris, Frans I).
• Ger Luijten "Frans Floris, Volume 21 of The new Hollstein Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, 1450-1700", Sound & Vision, 2011

• Media related to Paintings by Frans Floris the Elder at Wikimedia Commons