SUSTRIS, Lambert

Painter, part of a family of artists of Dutch descent, active in Italy and Germany. Lambert Sustris was a follower of Titian, and was influenced by Venetian and Florentine MannerismGLOSSARYA movement in Italian art from about 1520 to 1600. Developing out of the Renaissance, Mannerism rejected Renaissance balance and harmony in favor of emotional intensity and ambiguity. In Mannerist painting, this was expressed mainly through severe distortions of perspective and scale; complex and crowded compositions; strong, sometimes harsh or discordant colors; and elongated figures in exaggerated poses. In architecture, there was a playful exaggeration of Renaissance forms (largely in scale and proportion) and the greater use of bizarre decoration. Mannerism gave way to the Baroque. Leading Mannerists include Pontormo, Bronzino, Parmigianino, El Greco and Tintoretto.. He trained in Amsterdam and by the early to mid-1530s was in Rome; a graffito with his signature is in the Domus Aurea next to that of Maartin van Heemskerck, who was there in 1532–36. He was probably in Venice c. 1535, in the studio of Titian. His characteristic thin, dry handling can be seen in the landscape of Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin (1539, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice). There is a similar landscape in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) now attributed to Sustris. His presence in Titian's workshop in this period is supported by his Venus (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), a copy of Titian’s Venus of Urbino (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), which left Venice in 1538.

His son Friedrich Sustris became a leading exponent of Mannerism in Germany, where he worked as court artist to William V, Duke of Bavaria.