TENIERS, David the Younger

Prolific Flemish painter of the BaroqueGLOSSARYThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. period known for his genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. scenes of peasant life. He was the son and pupil of David Teniers the Elder. In 1637 he married Anna, daughter of the painter Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Teniers painted almost every kind of picture, but chiefly genre scenes of peasant life, many of which were subsequently used for tapestryGLOSSARYAs historical climatologists have not shown that Renaissance Italian winters and springs were warmer than they are now, it is puzzling that Italy did not fabricate tapestries to decorate and draught-proof the stony rooms of its palaces until 1545, when Cosimo I set up a manufactory in Florence. To hardiness or stinginess (tapestry was by far the most expensive form of wall decoration) we owe the existence of such secular frescoed decorative schemes as the labours of the months in the castle at Trent (c. 1407), the Arthurian scenes of Pisanello and the courtly ones of Mantegna in the Ducal Palace of Mantua, the delicious calendar fantasies of Cossa and others in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara - and, doubtless, many others that await liberation from whitewash or later panelling. These are all in situations where northern patrons would have used tapestries. These were imported, chiefly from Flanders, into Italy. The influence of their hunting and ceremonial scenes in particular registered on Italian 'gothic' painting or illumination and stained glass, and in literature. But the Italians did not make them. The most famous of all 'Italian' tapestries, those for the Sistine Chapel designed by Raphael, were made in Brussels from the full-scale coloured patterns, or cartoons, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nor is it clear whether imported tapestries were used habitually or simply to add grandeur to special occasions. Even when Cosimo's manufactory was in being, and working from designs by court artists of the calibre of Bronzino, Salviati and Allori, his own headquarters, the Palace of the Signoria (now the Palazzo Vecchio), was being decorated with frescoes. The subject is underexplored. designs in the 18th century. His early works in this vein show the influence of Adriaen Brouwer (e.g., Twelfth-night, Museo del Prado, Madrid). Many of his finer works date from 1640 to 1650. He was brilliant at handling crowd scenes in an open landscape and adept at characterizing his figures with a warm, human, and often humorous touch (e.g., The Village Fête, 1646; Hermitage, St. Petersburg). His landscape settings are atmospheric, and his still-life details precise. In the same decade he also painted a number of monumental processions (e.g., Procession of the Antwerp Civic Guards, 1643; Hermitage, St. Petersburg).

Teniers developed a second career in 1651 when he moved to Brussels, becoming court painter and keeper of the art collections to the regent of the Netherlands, the archduke Leopold William. He painted several views of the Archduke's picture gallery. He also made many small-scale individual copies of paintings in the Duke's collection by foreign artists, especially Italians. Of these, 244 were engraved in 1660 under the title Theatrum Pictorium. As a pictorial inventory of a great 17th-century collection, this book of engravings was unique in its time and still constitutes a valuable source for the art historian.

Teniers was also court painter to Don John of Austria, who succeeded the Archduke as regent in 1656, and was one of the prime movers in the foundation of the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts (1663) and subsequently the Academy in Antwerp (1665). Teniers' son, also named David (1638-85), often imitated his father's work. There are several of his altarpieces in churches in Belgium.