Gossart, Jan

(Mabuse; c. 1478-1532)

   Flemish painter from Maubeuge. Gossart may have trained in Antwerp where he is documented in 1503, the year he became an independent master. In 1507, he entered in the service of Philip of Burgundy in Walcheren, near Middleburg. In the following year, he went with Philip on a mission to the Vatican and, in 1517, to Utrecht where Philip was appointed bishop. While in Rome, Gossart sketched the ancient ruins and learned the Italian mode of painting, which was to have an immense impact on his art. This made him the first artist in Flanders to construct his images through the use of one-point linear perspective and to base his figures on ancient statuary and anatomical study. Gossart's St. Luke Painting the Virgin (c. 1515; Prague, National Gallery) for the Church of St. Ronbout at Malines shows the protagonists in a fantasy architecture that is visibly classical in form, as are the reliefs and statuary decorating the backdrop. The heavy contrasts of light and dark and crisp outlines are part of the Italian vocabulary, even though the treatment of drapery still retains its Flemish flavor. Gossart's Neptune andAmphitrite (1516; Berlin, Staatliche Museen) is part of a mythological series he and the Italian Jacopo de' Barbari painted for Philip's castle of Suytborg. It represents the first classicized, idealized depiction of nudes in Flemish history. The work betrays the influence not only of Greco-Roman statuary but also of Albrecht Dürer and Philip's court sculptor, Conrad Meit, both influenced by Italian art and interested in the depiction of the sensuous nude form. Gossart's Danaë (1527; Munich, Alte Pinakothek) is a seminude figure occupying an apsidal loggia, the shower of gold falling upon her as she watches in amazement.

   Gossart was also an accomplished portraitist. His portrait Baudouin de Bourgogne (c. 1525; Berlin, Staatliche Museen) shows the same clarity and plays of light and dark found in Italian portraits of the same period. The figure is set against a dark, undefined background, his form casting a shadow behind. His monumentality, coupled with the details of the costume and richness of textures, speak of the man's high social position. After Philip's death in 1524, Gossart entered in the service of Adolph of Burgundy. He died in 1532 in Middleburg where he had become a member of the city's religious brotherhood in 1509, and where he returned in the last years of his life to set up his own workshop. Gossart was a pioneer of Flemish art. The first to introduce the Italianate style to Flanders, he inaugurated the custom among Flemish masters to travel to Italy and learn from the art the region had to offer.