An Archangel

This expressive panel by Maerten de Vos exemplifies the artist’s distinctive blend of Italianate dynamism and Flemish detail. Together with the brothers Ambrosius I and Frans Francken I, de Vos ranks among the most important painters of altarpieces in Antwerp during the late sixteenth century. In 1558 he was enrolled as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp, where he spent most of his life, but for possibly travelling to Italy in the 1550s or 1560s. His work is highly eclectic—he borrowed motifs and figures from Michelangelo, Veronese, and Tintoretto, as well as his Flemish contemporaries Pieter Aertsen and Frans Floris.

Datable to circa 1570-80, the picture, a surviving fragment of a larger panel from an altarpiece, distills the compositional sweep of his larger ecclesiastical works into picture likely intended for a domestic environment. The archangel is shown in arresting three-quarter profile, turning sharply as he draws his sword. The taut musculature, fluttering drapery and expansive wings reflect the artist’s absorption of Italian Mannerism, while the luminous townscape—marked by winding waterways, clustered architecture and distant rolling hills—testifies to de Vos’s characteristic attention to landscape setting. The iridescent modelling of the feathers and the warm, silvery flesh tones correspond closely with other works by de Vos of this period.