Adriaen Thomasz Key

[3] His work was highly regarded in his time for its technical mastery and innovative concepts and thus influenced a later generation of painters including Rubens.

[9] The Habsburg Netherlands were at the time affected by the Beeldenstorm (Iconoclastic Fury) that commenced in the early 1560s and reached its peak in 1566.

He received commissions from the leader of the Dutch Revolt William of Orange and the socio-economic elite of Antwerp.

In Rome they had absorbed the influence of leading Italian artists of the period such as Michelangelo and Raphael and his pupils.

Upon their return home, these Northern artists created a Renaissance style, which assimilated Italian formal language.

This work exists in three versions, one in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one in the Mauritshuis in The Hague and third one in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

The sitter is posed against a dark background against which the flesh tones of the face, the white ruff and the elegant grey and gold decoration of his clothes stand out.

[4] In this portrait from Key's later period, the influence of Antonis Mor is shown in its increased interest in conveying the sitter's social status.

In this group portrait of a Flemish bourgeois family Key has placed the father and his six children very close together so that they occupy almost the entire canvas and acquire a monumental character.

The ruffs and white caps and the direction of the light attract the attention of the viewer to the individual faces of the family members.

The father is seated on a leather chair, before a table covered with a red carpet, on which are placed an hourglass, a skull and a book.

The skull on which one hand of the father rests and the hourglass evoke the theme of vanitas, i.e. the philosophical view that the passage of time and the fleeting nature of things will ultimately lead to death.

Similarly, in the Adoration of the Magi (Lempertz (Cologne) 11 May 2013 auction, lot 1019) the head of the young man with individualised facial features in the upper left corner may be a self-portrait.

Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, orders the Israelites Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to be cast into a furnace for refusing to worship his golden idol.

The woodcut contains many of the elements in Philips Galle's engraving of Nebuchadnezzar Casting the Children of Israel into the Fiery Furnace after a design by Maarten van Heemskerck, but with an increased emphasis on the role of the king.

The message of the bible story and the woodcut is to show that through God's grace his obedient worshippers are saved while the unfaithful perish.