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(b Aelst [now Aalst], Aug 14, 1502; d Brussels, Dec 6, 1550).

South Netherlandish painter, sculptor, architect and designer of woodcuts, stained glass and tapestries. Son of the Deputy Mayor of the village of Aelst, he was married twice, first to Anna van Dornicke (d 1529), the daughter of the Antwerp painter Jan Mertens, who may have been his teacher; they had two children, Michel van Coecke and Pieter van Coecke II (before 1527–59), the latter of whom became a painter. He later married Mayken Verhulst, herself a painter of miniatures and the mother of three children, Pauwel, Katelijne and Maria; they are shown with their parents in Coecke’s Family Portrait (Zurich, Ksthaus). Mayken is credited with having taught the technique of painting in tempera on cloth to her son-in-law, Pieter Bruegel the elder, who married Maria in 1563. (For family tree see Bruegel family.) Van Mander also stated that Bruegel was Coecke’s apprentice, an allegation no longer universally accepted in view of their substantial stylistic differences. Although the names of other students of Coecke’s, including ...

[Santi, Raffaello; Sanzio, Raffaello]

(b Urbino, 28 March or April 6, 1483; d Rome, April 6, 1520).

Italian painter, draughtsman and architect. He has always been acknowledged as one of the greatest European artists. With Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Titian, he was one of the most famous painters working in Italy in the period from 1500 to 1520, often identified as the High Renaissance, and in this period he was perhaps the most important figure. His early altarpieces (of 1500–07) were made for Città di Castello and Perugia; in Florence between 1504 and 1508 he created some of his finest portraits and a series of devotional paintings of the Holy Family (see fig.). In 1508 he moved to Rome, where he decorated in fresco the Stanze of the papal apartments in the Vatican Palace—perhaps his most celebrated works—as well as executing smaller paintings in oil (including portraits) and a series of major altarpieces, some of which were sent from Rome to other centres. In Rome, Raphael came to run a large workshop. He also diversified, working as an architect and designer of prints....

[Mayo, Juan de]

(b Beverwijk, c. 1500; d Brussels, c. 1559).

Dutch painter, draughtsman, etcher and tapestry designer, active in Flanders and Spain. His early paintings show links with the work of Jan van Scorel, Jan Gossart and Bernard van Orley; it is thus assumed that he trained in the northern Netherlands, probably together with van Scorel in the workshop of Cornelis Willemsz. (fl 1481–?1552) in Haarlem or Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen in Amsterdam. Vermeyen could also have worked briefly with Gossart after the latter had moved to the Utrecht area in 1517 and perhaps also with van Orley in Brussels before he started his own workshop in 1525. In that year he entered the service of Margaret of Austria in Mechelen. He travelled with her to Augsburg and Innsbruck, where he painted nineteen portraits of the imperial family, only one of which survives, that of Cardinal Erard de La Marck (c. 1528–9; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.); there are only workshop copies of the rest. Vermeyen’s figures are rather stocky and swollen, and the influence of van Scorel and Gossart is clear. The most striking feature of these early portraits is the aggressively gesticulating hands with outstretched fingers....