Justus Sustermans

1597 – 1681

Flemish painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. During his lifetime Giusto Suttermans (as he signed his name), court painter to the Medici, was considered the foremost portrait painter in Italy, the peer of van Dyck, Rubens or Holbein. His best works show that he deserved his contemporaries' esteem, but time, the extinction of the Medici family and the failure of art historians to recognize the difference between his autograph works and those by his workshop, copyists and contemporary Florentine painters have all contributed to tarnish his once high reputation.

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