Background
He was the son of Flemish painter January Massys, Matsys, or Metsys and the grandson and namesake of Quentin Massys or Metsys.
He was the son of Flemish painter January Massys, Matsys, or Metsys and the grandson and namesake of Quentin Massys or Metsys.
He left England for Frankfurt in 1588 and died there the next year. He is best known for the Sieve Portrait of Elizabeth I, in which she is depicted as Tuccia, a Vestal Virgin who proved her chastity by carrying water from the Tiber River to the Temple of Vesta without spilling a drop. Elizabeth is surrounded by symbols of empire, including a column and a globe, iconography that would appear again and again in her portraiture of the 1580s and 1590s, most notably in the Armada Portrait of 1588.
Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke.