Pieter van Aelst or Coecke Pieter van Aelst (1502-1550 Aalst Brussels), Alleged artist. Madonna with the book and baby Jesus. 40x30, oil paint on panel. From wealthy Catania family. "The excellent Flemish Renaissance painter has lived in Italy, where he got to appreciate the art of his contemporaries Italian painters. It was a great Raphael estimator, which are often exhales, such as this painting, while substantially stayed within his own stylistic and developments. He made an important contribution to the body of the great Renaissance art in Flanders. Designer, painter and publisher of architectural treatises was disputed by the most famous people of his time, Charles V, King Francis I of France, Henry VIII of England, Cosimo I de 'Medici. In this work is evident influence of the Italian Renaissance style. He starts in the Netherlands the transition and the transition from late Gothic to Renaissance conception. The writings and treatises of Sebastiano Serlio were the sample. This painting, simple, probably for a private commission is inspired in some way to Our Lady of Constable by Raffaelo. In fact, the representation of the Madonna and child is rendered in a real and fluid, giving naturalness to the scene. He abolishes the background landscape and figuration focuses on two characters thus giving more strength to the spiritual meaning. Shines and is palpable harmony sad and melancholic at the same time a serenity transmitted by the characters, especially in the gaze of Mary, who reads the prophecy of the death of Jesus, with gentle resignation that the child enjoins the reading pointing with his finger. The forms are well-balanced is the child's gestures indicating and Mary, who holds him to life protectively, rlateono happy and redundant scene of harmony. A light that appears to be from a window centered characters and illuminates the painted clothes in a soft and fluid. It was an example for all those olandesi- Mannerist painters of the second mid book 500."ASORstudio