The Calamities of Humanity

landscape

Kerstiaen de Keuninck specialized in fantastic panoramas with dramatic lighting effects, executed with lively brushwork. The Calamities of Humanity belongs to a 16th-century tradition of paintings in which natural disasters allude to the turbulent times.

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About the Artist

Kerstiaen de Keuninck

1560 – 1632

Kerstiaen de Keuninck (or Coninck), Flemish painter. Although from Kortrijk (Courtrai), from an early age he lived in Antwerp. He was listed in 1577 as one of the recipients of the Poor-box (armenbus) of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, where he was received as master in 1580. He married in 1585. De Keuninck took on Carel de Ferrara as an apprentice in 1599. His son Kerstiaen de Keuninck the younger (d. ca. 1643) became a master in 1613. In 1629 Engel Ergo started an apprenticeship with a Kerstiaen de Keuninck: it is not clear whether this refers to father or son.

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