The art of Antonis Mor

This project investigates the important, yet relatively unknown portrait specialist Antonis Mor (1517/21ca.1576), who from the humble background in Utrecht became painter to the prelates, princes and civic elites of the Habsburg Empire. However, this is not a conventional artist's monograph. Mor's biography and works here document an exemplary figure's responses to the profound challenges to established concepts of artistry and imitation posed by protestant iconoclasm, political revolt and academic discourses of art. Mor deployed the puns on his name amor, mors and memoria, in an attempt to reconcile self-effecting mimesis with self-conscious regimes of authorship and visual representation.