Quinten Metsys

Legend says Quinten Metsys began as a blacksmith and took up the brush to win a painter's daughter, and whether or not that is true, he became the leading painter of Antwerp just as that city was turning into Europe's richest port. He worked there from about 1490 until his death in 1530.

He is famous for two very different faces. 'The Money Changer and His Wife' shows a couple weighing gold coins, the wife's prayer book open but her eyes on the scales, a sharp, gently moralising look at the new world of money around him. And a grotesque portrait of an ageing woman in outdated finery, often called 'The Ugly Duchess', is so memorable that it later inspired the Duchess in the illustrations to 'Alice in Wonderland'.

Metsys bridged the old Flemish tradition of fine detail and the newer Italian ideas drifting north through the port. He died in Antwerp in 1530, and the city was proud enough of him that a well cover honouring him was later set up near its cathedral.