Bernaert van Orley

Bernaert van Orley brought Italian Renaissance ideas into Flemish painting. His figures are graceful and solid, his architecture is classical, and his colours are bright and clear. Albrecht Dürer, who met him, compared him to Raphael.

He was born and worked in Brussels, where he was court painter to Margaret of Austria and later to Mary of Hungary. He ran a large workshop and designed far more than altarpieces: tapestries such as the Hunts of Maximilian now in the Louvre, and stained glass windows for Brussels Cathedral. His Haneton Triptych and the Job Altarpiece are in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

He was also a fine portraitist, as his portrait of the physician Joris van Zelle shows. Look for the careful, polished finish and the Italian style buildings that frame many of his scenes.