Vos, Martin De

, a Flemish painter of the sixteenth century, was born at Antwerp in 1520, and was first entered in his profession under his father. Having made himself somewhat eminent in Flanders, he travelled to Venice, Home, and Florence, where he made a collection of curious drawings of several sorts of vases made use of by the old Greeks and Romans at their entertainments, funerals, and sacrifices. At his return into Flanders he painted some of these old festival-solemnities, in which the disposition and lively representation of these vases were very ornamental to his performance. He excelled in most branches of the art, but his drawings in particular, were reckoned some of the best and most serviceable for beginners. His colouring was strong and lively; his design natural and free, and his disposition judicious. He had so much fame in his profession, that, when the prince of Parma made himself master of Antwerp, he made De Vos a visit, and sat to him. He died at Antwerp in 1604, being eighty-four years of age.

There was a Simon de Vos, born at Antwerp in 1603, who painted history equally well in large and in small sizes, with a free pencil, and a touch light and firm; his colouring being in general lively and agreeable, produced a good effect. His figures were well designed, although sometimes a little too much constrained in the attitudes; and he often wanted elegance and dignity in his ideas, as well as grace in the airs of his figures. But he shewed extraordinary force and nature in his pictures of the chase; and one of his compositions in that style is in the cabinet of the Elector Palatine. Houbraken says that Simon de Vos was alive in. 1662. At Antwerp, there is a picture by him of St. Norbert receiving the sacrament, in v.hich are introduced a great number of portraits extremely well painted. De Vos, sir Joshua Reynolds remarks, particularly excelled in portraits. In the poor-house at Antwerp, there was, when sir Joshua visited it, his own portrait by himself, in black, leaning on the back of a chair, with a scroll of blue paper in his hand, so highly finished, in the broad manner of Corregio, that nothing could exceed it. ²

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