Distribution of Loaves to the Poor

religious

A leading figure in the transition from Mannerist tradition to the new realism in genre painting was David Vinckboons, one of the most popular and prolific painters and print designers of his time. Good proof of Vinckboons' debt to Bruegel is the debate which scholars still hold about whether some pictures should be attributed to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, whose art was a shadow of his great father's, or to Vinckboons. Vinckboon's family had settled in Amsterdam by the time he was fifteen years old, and he apparently spent the rest of his life in Holland.

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About the Artist

David Vinckboons

1576 – 1633

Flemish-born painter, active in Amsterdam. He painted landscapes and genre scenes and is a transitional figure between the decorative and imaginative Mannerist tradition and the more naturalistic style associated with 17th-century Dutch painting. His early genre pictures depicting village festivals reveal the influence of Pieter Bruegel, and Vinckboons is credited with introducing some of his motifs into Holland. It has been asserted that Vinckboons's works can always be identified by the presence of a finch ('vinck') in a tree ('boom'), but the painstaking student usually finds that the bird has flown.

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