Justus van Gent, also known as Joos…
1476 CE
Justus van Gent, also known as Joos van Ghent or Joos van Wassenhove, had (according to documents) been admitted to the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1460 and, four years later, was painting in Ghent, where he had become friends with Hugo van der Goes (whom he may have taught).
Sometime after 1465, Joos had gone to Italy, where he is employed by the great art patron Frederigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, a very successful condottiere, a skillful diplomat and an enthusiastic patron of art and literature.
Vespasian, a Florentine bookseller who contributes much to form the antiquarian taste of Frederick of Montefeltro, states that this duke had sent to the Netherlands for a capable artist to paint a series of ancient worthies for a library recently erected in the palace of Urbino.
It has been conjectured that the author of these twenty-eight portraits of "Famous Men," which are still in existence at the Louvre and in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche at Urbino, was Justus van Gent.
As a composer and draftsman, Giusto, as he is known in Italy, compares unfavorably with the better-known painters of Flanders; though his portraits are good, his ideal figures are not remarkable for subtlety of character and expression.
Joos's work at Urbino reflects the influence of Netherlandish masters van der Weyden and Bouts but without the typical Flemish concern for realistic detail.
His “Communion of the Apostles,” painted in about 1472-74, typifies his eclectic style, in which an Italianate feeling for monumentality and spatial harmony coexists with Flemish precision and clarity.
Joos dies in his mid-forties around 1476.
At Montefeltro’s court, Piero della Francesca writes on the science of perspective, Francesco di Giorgio Martini writes his Trattato di architettura ("Treatise on Architecture") and Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, writes his poetical account of the chief artists of his time.
Federico's brilliant court, according to the descriptions in Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano ("The Book of the Courtier"), sets standards of what is to characterize a modern European "gentleman" for centuries to come.
Images
Federico da Montefeltro and His Son, Guidobaldo
Locations
People
Groups
Topics
Regions
Southwest Europe
View →Subregions
