Editing Gillis van Coninxloo

{{Short description|Flemish painter}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}}
[[File:Portrait of Gillis van Coninxloo (II). by Andries Jacobsz. Stock.jpg|thumb|180px|Portrait of Gillis van Coninxloo by [[Andries Jacobsz Stock]], published in 1610 by [[Hendrik Hondius I]].]]
[[File:Gillis van Coninxloo - Landscape with the Judgement of Paris - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|400px|''Landscape with the Judgement of Paris'', in Mannerist [[world landscape]] style.]]
'''Gillis van Coninxloo''' (now also referred to as '''Gillis van Coninxloo II''' but previously referred to as '''Gillis van Coninxloo III''') (24 January 1544 – January 1607) was a [[Southern Netherlands|Flemish]] painter of [[landscape art|landscape]]s who played an important role in the development of Northern landscape art at the turn of the 17th century.  He spent the last 20 years of his life abroad, first in [[Germany]] and later in the [[Dutch Republic]].<ref name=rk>[https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/31580 Gillis van Coninxloo] at the [[Netherlands Institute for Art History]] {{in lang|nl}}</ref>

==Life==
He was born in [[Antwerp]] and studied under [[Pieter Coecke van Aelst]], Lenaert Kroes and [[Gillis Mostaert]].  He travelled in [[France]] after completing his training.  He became a member of the Antwerp [[Guild of Saint Luke]] in 1570 and worked in Antwerp until 1585 when [[Fall of Antwerp|Antwerp fell]] to the Spanish.  He left first for [[Middelburg, Zeeland|Middelburg]] and then in 1587 for [[Frankenthal]] where he was active until 1595.  He then moved to [[Amsterdam]] where he died in 1607.<ref name=rk/>

He had many pupils including [[Pieter Brueghel the Younger]], Govert Govertsz van Arnhem, [[Willem van den Bundel]], Gillis van Coninxloo III, Jonas van Merle, [[Hercules Seghers]] and [[Jacques van der Wijen]].<ref name=rk/>

==Work==
[[Image:Gillis van Coninxloo - Forest Landscape.jpg|thumb|390px|''Forest Landscape'', 1598, Liechtenstein Collection]]
Coninxloo ranks as one of the most important Flemish landscape painters of around the turn of the 17th century.  He exercised a strong influence on [[Jan Brueghel the Elder]], [[Pieter Schoubroeck]], [[Roelandt Savery]], and other Flemish and Dutch landscape painters of this period.

His early landscapes were often [[Northern Mannerist]] versions of the established [[world landscape]] type, though with close views of trees already narrowing the panoramic view.  Beginning in the 1590s Coninxloo introduced a new approach into Flemish landscape painting, with close-up views of forests reminiscent of [[Albrecht Altdorfer]] and the [[Danube school]] nearly a century earlier and almost or entirely shutting out a distant view.  While earlier forest landscapes had used forests as the backdrop for human activity, van Coninxloo turned them into the subject proper by submerging tiny human figures in elaborate compositions of trees on a hugely exaggerated scale.  A ''Forest Landscape'' of 1598 in the [[Liechtenstein Collection]] is the first work to take this approach to its extreme: the sky is only visible in a few patches between branches and a single tiny human figure reclines under a tree.<ref name="Vlieghe, 175-176">Vlieghe, 175-176</ref> This painting achieves great intensity and atmospheric quality through its fine shades of brown and green and its accentuated handling of light.<ref>[http://www.liechtensteincollections.at/en/pages/artbase_main.asp?module=browse&action=m_work&lang=en&sid=87294&oid=W-1472004121953420245 Gillis van Coninxloo, ''Forest Landscape''], 1598, at the Liechtenstein Collection</ref>

During his stay in Frankenthal from 1588 to 1595, he influenced several better known Flemish émigré landscape painters, who are now collectively referred to as the 'Frankenthal School'.  The early 17th century art historian [[Karel van Mander]] wrote about Coninxloo in his ''[[Schilder-boeck]]''.  Van Mander stated that Coninxloo's teacher Pieter Coeke van Aelst was his cousin, and that ''I know at this time of no better landscape painter, and I notice that they are following his manner very much in Holland''.<ref name="Vlieghe, 175-176"/>

The influence of his work spread in Holland by means of his designs for large-scale prints, mainly engraved by Flemish émigré printmakers [[Nicolaes de Bruyn]] and [[Jan van Londerseel]] who published in the Dutch Republic.<ref>Larry Silver, ''Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market'', University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, pp. 164–165</ref>

==Works==
Some of his paintings are:
* ''"The Judgment of Midas"'' (Dresden)
* ''"Latona"'' (Hermitage, St. Petersburg)
* ''"Landscape with Venus and Adonis"'' (Frankenthal)
* ''"Landscape with Duck Hunters" ([[Saarland Museum]], Saarbrücken)''

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
*Sutton, Peter C., ed. (1987). ''Masters of 17th-century Dutch Landscape Painting''. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. {{ISBN|0878462821}}
* Vlieghe, H. (1998). ''Flemish art and architecture, 1585-1700''. Yale University Press Pelican history of art. New Haven: Yale University Press. {{ISBN|0300070381}}

== External links ==

{{Commons category}}
*[http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/bio/c/coninxlo/biograph.html Web Gallery of Art: Biography of Gillis van Coninxloo]
*[http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/c/coninxlo/index.html Web Gallery of Art: Paintings by Gillis van Coninxloo]
*[http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/coninxloo_gillis_van.html Gillis van Coninxloo on Artcyclopedia]
*''[http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/97318 Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints]'', a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Gillis van Coninxloo (see index)

{{ACArt}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coninxloo, Gillis Van}}
[[Category:1544 births]]
[[Category:1607 deaths]]
[[Category:People from the Spanish Netherlands]]
[[Category:Flemish Mannerist painters]]
[[Category:Flemish landscape painters]]
[[Category:Painters from Antwerp]]