Frans Floris

Frans Floris brought Italian heroic nudes and classical mythology to Antwerp and was called the Flemish Raphael. His pictures combine muscular figures drawn after Michelangelo with the rich oil technique of the Netherlands.

He was born in Antwerp in 1519, trained first as a sculptor and then as a painter with Lambert Lombard in Liège, and spent time in Rome around 1541 and 1542. Back in Antwerp he ran one of the largest workshops of the time, said to have employed around 120 assistants. His Mars and Venus Ensnared by Vulcan (1547) is in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. He died in 1570.

His oil sketches of heads, such as Head of a Woman and Study Head of a Bearded Man, were painted quickly from life and are among his most direct works.