(b ?Alost; fl 1509–55).
Flemish tapestry-maker. He was the son of Pieter van Edingen Aelst, also a weaver of tapestries, and a member of his father’s workshop in Brussels. In 1509 he was cited as a restorer of Margaret of Austria’s collection of tapestries. In 1517 he was paid for tapestries of David and John the Baptist made for Henry VIII, and in 1547 and 1548 he was still listed as a tapestry maker for the court of Charles V. His mark,
(b ?Milan, 1527; d Milan, July 11, 1593).
Italian painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer, active also in Austria and Bohemia. He came from a distinguished Milanese family that included a number of archbishops of the city; his father was the painter Biagio Arcimboldo. Giuseppe is first documented in 1549, working with his father for Milan Cathedral; he received payments until 1558 for supplying paintings, designs for an altar baldacchino and stained-glass windows for the cathedral: the Story of Lot and the Life of St Catherine in the south transept windows are usually attributed to him. He collaborated with Giuseppe Meda in designing the gonfalone of St Ambrose in Milan, probably sometime soon after 1558. In 1556 he received a commission to paint the south wall and vault of the south transept of Monza Cathedral, also in Lombardy, a work that must have been completed by 1562. Portions of a fresco of the Tree of Jesse on the south wall there can be attributed to him. In ...
(fl Arras, 1419–64).
Burgundian painter and tapestry designer. He was a wealthy member of the Arras bourgeoisie and seems to have been a very successful artist. His first recorded work was the painting of mainly heraldic devices in memory of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, at the abbey of St Vaast in 1419. The work was undertaken in such a short time and for a sufficiently large payment that he has been considered the head of an important workshop. In 1426 he was again paid for heraldic painting at Arras, and in 1454 he shared with Jacques Daret the supervision of the painting by Robert de Moncheaux (fl 1454–68) of the tomb of the abbot of St Vaast, Jean du Clercq (untraced).
Bauduin is best known for his execution of the designs for a set of tapestries of the History of Gideon (destr. 1794), considered the most outstanding tapestries owned by ...
[Lancelot]
(b ?Poperinghe, 1488; d Bruges, bur March 4, 1581).
South Netherlandish painter, draughtsman, designer, architect, civil engineer, cartographer and engraver. He is said to have trained as a bricklayer, and the trowel he used to add as his housemark next to his monogram
(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 ...
(b Paris, 1561; d Paris, Nov 22, 1602).
French painter and draughtsman. He was a pupil at Fontainebleau of Ruggiero de Ruggieri (d after 1597) and was also trained by Martin Fréminet’s father Médéric Fréminet, a rather mediocre painter in Paris. Dubreuil became Premier Peintre to Henry IV and is usually identified as a member of the so-called second Fontainebleau school (see Fontainebleau school), together with Ambroise Dubois and Martin Fréminet. These artists were employed by the king to decorate the royal palaces, their functions being similar to those of Rosso Fiorentino and Primaticcio earlier at Fontainebleau under Francis I. Dubreuil’s death meant that many of the projects in which he was involved had to be completed by assistants. Despite this and the fact that the majority of his finished work has since been lost, he is considered an important link between the Mannerism of Primaticcio and the classicism of Nicolas Poussin and his contemporaries in the following century....
(fl Arras, 1395–1429).
Burgundian tapestry-weaver. He is notable as the only documented 14th- or 15th-century high-warp weaver whose part in the production of an extant tapestry is certain. The tapestries of SS Piat and Eleuthère (Tournai, Notre-Dame Cathedral) were made and finished at Arras by Feré in December 1402, according to a lost inscription woven above four scenes and now preserved only in a 17th-century copy by Canon Dufief (Brussels, Bib. Royale Albert 1er, MS. 13762, p. 82). The same inscription stated that Feré made this work for Toussaint Prier (d 1437), a canon of Tournai Cathedral, to which he donated the tapestries. It is not clear from the inscription whether Feré was personally responsible for all or part of the weaving or acted as the overseer of a workshop. The tapestry itself, however, appears in its simplicity of materials, scale, and design to conform with the documentary evidence for Feré’s life....
[Mattis Matheus]
(b Nördlingen, c. 1500; d Lauingen, 1569/70).
German painter, miniature painter, and woodcut and tapestry designer. He was probably the son of Matthias, a Nördlingen shoemaker known as Geiger (d 1521), and probably served an apprenticeship in Nördlingen with Hans Schäufelein. By 1525 he was established as an artist in Lauingen, then part of the Duchy of Neuburg, where he appears annually in the tax register until 1568. From 1531 to 1567 he served as the city’s weighmaster. He was married to Anna Reiser, perhaps the daughter of the Lauingen painter Matthes Reiser (d c. 1519), and they had two sons, Hans (fl 1564/5), a goldsmith in Lauingen, and Ambrosius (fl 1568).
Gerung’s major patron was Otto Henry, later Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Between 1530 and 1532 Gerung illuminated the spaces left empty for New Testament scenes in Otto Henry’s large unfinished 15th-century Bible (divided between Munich, Bayer. Staatsbib. and Heidelberg, Kurpfälz. Mus.). He modelled the Bible’s Apocalypse miniatures on Dürer’s woodcut series from ...
(b Paris; fl Brussels, 1448; d c. 1468).
Franco-Flemish illuminator, scribe and designer. He was first paid for restoring old books and writing and illustrating new ones for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, on 26 January 1448, a task that he continued for the next eight years, being rewarded with the title of ducal valet de chambre in October 1449. In 1456 he ceased this exclusive work; in order to widen his clientele, he purchased citizenship in Bruges the following year, probably because of a new ordinance limiting the practice of illumination to citizens. He paid dues to the Bruges guild until 1462 but continued to live in Brussels near the ducal palace on the Coudenberg. Here he joined the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross in 1463, the membership of which comprised ducal servants and city leaders, including Rogier van der Weyden. In 1464 Jean became valet de chambre to the Duke’s heir, Charles de Charolais; he was probably still alive in ...
[Nicola; Niccola]
(b ?Brussels; d Mantua, 1562).
Flemish tapestry weaver. From c. 1517 he and his brother Giovanni Karcher (fl 1517–62) were working for the Este court in Ferrara (see Ferrara §3), organizing a large workshop for Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara and Modena. That same year Nicolas went to Brussels and returned with eight weavers, including Rost [Rosta; Vander Roost; del Rosto; Rostel; Arrost], Jan. Nicolas worked with his brother on the Battle of the Gods and Giants (four pieces; destr.), the cartoons of which were by the Dossi brothers and Giulio Romano. In 1539, however, Karcher was invited to set up his own workshop in Mantua by Federico II Gonzaga, 5th Marchese and 1st Duke of Mantua, and took ten workers with him to Mantua (see Mantua, §3). In October 1545 Karcher moved to Florence. His workshop first wove a trial Lamentation (1546; Florence, Uffizi) and a trial pack-cover (destr.), before a three-year contract was signed by ...
[Campaña; Pedro (de)]
(b Brussels, c. 1503; d Brussels, c. 1580).
South Netherlandish painter, tapestry designer and sculptor, active also in Italy and Spain. His biography is known almost exclusively from Spanish sources. The date of his birth is given as 1503 by Pacheco in the Arte (1649; although this contradicts his earlier Libro de retratos 1599); the same birthdate was provided by Palomino and by Céan Bermúdez, who, unlike the earlier writers, added a death date in Brussels of 1580. Kempeneer belonged to a well-known Brussels family of painters and tapestry designers. Before leaving for Italy, he must have trained as a tapestry designer, under the influence of Raphael’s tapestry cartoons of the Acts of the Apostles, which at this date were in Brussels, and those of the Scuola Nuova from Raphael’s workshop. Kempeneer also trained under Bernard van Orley, in whose workshop he painted the grisailles on the back of a Last Judgement—St Stephen and St Mark Giving Alms...
South Netherlandish family of tapestry weavers (see fig.). Pieter de Pannemaker (fl 1517–32), like Pieter Coecke van Aelst, furnished the palaces of Europe with sumptuous tapestries in gold and silver threads and expensively dyed fine silks and wools from his shop in Brussels. In 1520 Pieter de Pannemaker contracted Bernard van Orley to make tapestry cartoons for his shop. A lovely fragment, probably designed by Bernard and woven by Pieter, shows an Allegory of the Four Winds (Paris, Mus. Cluny). Margaret of Austria, Regent of the southern Netherlands, bought a series of the Passion in four scenes (Madrid, Patrm. N.); two similar sets by de Pannemaker are connected to a drawing by van Orley (Stuttgart, Staatsgal.). In 1523 Margaret ordered a magnificent dais of three tapestries from Pieter, later used in the abdication ceremony of Emperor Charles V. In 1527 Pieter de Pannemaker and van Orley, with ten other weavers, appeared before the Inquisition at Leuven, charged with sheltering a Protestant preacher. Pieter was fined, but by ...
(b ?nr Liège, c. 1410; d Aix-en-Provence, c. 1476).
Embroiderer and painter. Possibly in the circle of Jan van Eyck, he was apparently active at the Burgundian court in the early 1430s. It was perhaps in Dijon, while a prisoner there in 1435–6, that René, Duke of Anjou, engaged him; Pierre is documented in Naples with René in 1440. The artist’s first wife was Ydria Exters ‘d’Allemagne’ (d 1460), a widow and the mother of Barthélemy d’Eyck, presumably René’s chief painter. In 1444 Pierre du Billant painted a chariot for René’s daughter Margaret (1430–82) for her engagement to Henry VI, King of England, and in 1445 he received the substantial payment of 404 livres ‘pour ouvraiges de broderies faits à Tours’. In 1447 he painted on canvas a St Mary Magdalene (untraced), which René sent to his wife. Pierre headed a workshop in which his principal assistant is identified as Jean Gaultier. In 1448 he received 173 livres for unspecified works. In ...
[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....
[Jean de Bruxelles]
(fl 1498–1521).
South Netherlandish painter and designer of tapestry cartoons, stained-glass windows, and sculpture. He is first documented in 1498, as a Brother of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, and later became court painter at Mechelen and Brussels to Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Spanish Netherlands. Jan’s widely imitated tapestry designs, filled with graceful, melancholic figures set in a mixture of Late Gothic and Renaissance architecture, helped to create a uniform style in Brussels tapestries in the first quarter of the 16th century. The basis for attributing tapestries to Jan, or his workshop, is the documented series of the Story of Herkinbald (Brussels, Musées Royaux A. & Hist.), which was made for the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament at Leuven and for the design for which Jan was paid 2.5 Rhenish guilders and some wine in 1513. His collaborators were the painter ‘Philips’ [Maître Phillipe] and the weaver ‘...
[Janni; Giovanni]
(b Brussels, fl 1535; d Florence, Jan 22, 1564).
Flemish tapestry-weaver. He was apparently trained in Brussels in a weaving tradition aesthetically close to that of the tapestry weaver Pieter van Aelst. Rost was an independent master by 1535 and signed with a roast on a spit, a pun on his name. A tapestry depicting the Rest after the Hunt (before 1536; Paris, Mus. Marmottan) bears the mark of Brussels and Rost’s emblem. In 1536 Rost began work for Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara in the workshop of the brothers Giovanni Karcher and Nicolas Karcher. In August 1545 Rost founded his own workshop in Florence and for the next eight years he worked for Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and other private patrons. He began work on the series of the Story of Joseph (1546–53; ten, Florence, Sopr. B.A. & Storici Col., and ten, Rome, Pal. Quirinale; see Florence §III 3.) and grotesque spalliere (...
[Johannes] [Straat Jan van der; Straet, Jan van (der); Strada, Giovanni della; Stradano, Giovanni; Stratensis, Giovanni]
(b Bruges, 1523; d Florence, Nov 3, 1605).
Flemish painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. The traces of his Flemish artistic heritage were much appreciated in the refined Mannerist circle, led by Vasari, in which he was active in Florence. He was especially skilled as a designer of tapestry cycles.
According to Borghini, who knew his subject personally, Stradanus’s first teacher was his father, Jan van der Straet (d 1535), an otherwise unknown painter in Bruges. After his father’s death, he was apprenticed for two years to Maximilian Franck (1490–1547). From 1537 to 1540 Stradanus trained in Antwerp under Pieter Aertsen. According to van Mander, Stradanus became a master in Antwerp c. 1545. In the same year he left for Italy, having heard of the excellence of the Italian painters. He travelled by way of Lyon, where he worked with Corneille de Lyon.
Although no works can be ascribed to Stradanus with any certainty before his arrival in Italy, Van Puyvelde dated the following works before ...
(fl c. 1544–c. 1566).
Flemish painter and tapestry designer, active in Sweden. He was made a master of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp in 1544 and worked in Sweden from 1556 to 1566. He executed decorations (1558–61) at Kalmar Slott in Småland and designed the cartoons for the monumental tapestries (...
[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....
( di Andrea ) [ il Bologna ]
(b Bologna; d Breda, 1534–6).
Italian painter. He is first mentioned in a document drafted in Rome in 1517. According to Vasari, he was a pupil of Raphael and was among the artists who worked with him on the frescoes in the Vatican Logge. In 1520 he travelled to Flanders, carrying a letter of recommendation from Pope Leo X, to prepare cartoons for tapestries—to be woven in Brussels—for the Sala di Costantino and the Sala del Concistoro in the Vatican. In Flanders he met Dürer, who mentioned him in his Journal of Travels in the Low Countries (travels made between 1520 and 1521). Vincidor made a portrait of Dürer (untraced; copy by Willem van Haecht II, Antwerp, Rubenshuis).
On the basis of the written descriptions of the tapestry cartoons for the Sala di Costantino that Vincidor sent Leo X in 1521, the following works have been firmly attributed to him: the drawings of Playing Putti...
