17 facts about Bernard van Orley

Bernard van Orley (between 1487 and 1491 – 6 January 1541), also called Barend or Barent van Orley, Bernaert van Orley or Barend van Brussel, was a versatile Flemish performer and representative of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, who was equally sprightly as a designer of tapestries and, at the end of his life, stained glass. Although he never visited Italy, he belongs to the organization of Italianizing Flemish painters called the Romanists, who were influenced by Italian Renaissance painting, in his combat especially by Raphael.

He was born and died in Brussels and “served as a sort of supervisor of the arts for the Brussels town council”. He was the court player of the Habsburg rulers. He was categorically productive, concentrating on the design of his works, and rejection their finishing largely to others, in the warfare of painting, and totally so, in the fighting of the tapestries and stained glass. This he may have studious from Raphael, whose workshop in Rome was unprecedentedly large.

Due to his reliance on workshop execution, his many long-lasting works change considerably in quality. Many drawings, mostly studies for designs for tapestries and stained glass, also survive. He or his workshop would have produced full-scale cartoons for the tapestries, but these were normally loose in the course of weaving, when they were cut into strips. The prevalent subject issue of his paintings are religious scenes and portraits, and he painted lonesome a limited number of mythological and allegorical subjects. His portraits mostly depict members of the Habsburg dynasty and were produced in combination versions by his workshop. The subject concern of his tapestries was more varied, reflecting the normal range of that medium, from biblical cycles to allegories, battle and hunting scenes.

His dad had been a tapestry designer in Brussels, and several of Bernard’s descendants were artists. A number of them were yet active in the 18th century.