Joseph Archer Crowe

“ Happily, Mabuse was capable of higher efforts. His St Luke painting the portrait of the Virgin in Sanct Veit at Prague, a variety of the same subject in the Belvedere at Vienna, the Madonna of the Baring collection in London, or the numerous repetitions of Christ and the scoffers (Ghent and Antwerp) , all prove that travel had left many of Mabuse’s fundamental peculiarities unaltered. His figures still retain the character of stone; his architecture is as rich and varied, his tones are as strong as ever. ”

“ The works of Mabuse are those of a hardworking and patient artist; the number of his still extant pictures practically demonstrates that he was not a debauchee. The marriage of his daughter with the painter Henry Van der Heyden of Louvain proves that he had a home, and did not live habitually in taverns, as Van Mander suggests. His death at Antwerp, on the 1st of October 1532, is recorded in the portrait engraved by Jerome Cock. ”

“ At Scawby he illustrates the legend of the count of Toulouse, who parted with his worldly goods to assume the frock of a hermit. At Castle Howard he represents the Adoration of the Kings, and throws together some thirty figures on an architectural background, varied in detail, massive in shape and fanciful in ornament. ”