Pieter Pourbus

1523 – 1584

Flemish painter, draughtsman, cartographer, surveyor and civil engineer. According to van Mander, who must have been a good friend, in his early youth Pieter Pourbus settled in Bruges, a prosperous town that offered excellent prospects for artists. Pourbus was registered as a (foreign) master in the Bruges Guild of St Luke in 1543 and soon emerged as the leading artist of his generation in the city. He took an active part in public life: he was involved with the rhetoricians, was a member of the archers' company of St Joris (from 1544) and was repeatedly appointed an officer in the painters' guild. He followed, in his religious works, the florid Italianizing style of Lancelot Blondeel, whose daughter he married. His portraits are stiff and formal affairs, but equal to those of his contemporaries Mor or Joos van Cleve. There are works in Antwerp, Bruges (Museum and churches), Brussels, London (Wallace Collection), New York (Metropolitan Museum) and elsewhere.

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