Lucas van leyden biography

Lucas van Leyden ( – 8 August ), also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a.

The Dutch engraver and painter Lucas van Leyden was the leading graphic artist in the Netherlands in the early 16th century. Because Lucas van Leyden showed such a highly developed graphic talent in engravings dated , his birth date has been thought by some to be as early as Generally, however, scholarly opinion has accepted Karel van Mander's statement that Lucas was born in Leyden Leiden in His father, Hughe Jacobsz, was his first teacher, followed by the mannerist painter Cornelis Engelbrechtsz.

In Lucas was married in Leyden, where he worked all his life. In he traveled to Antwerp. His technical mastery and compositional skill at this early age presuppose considerable training and experience as well as a formidable natural talent. It is not unlikely that, as Van Mander says, Lucas had learned his craft in the shops of a specialist in inlaying metal in weapons and of a goldsmith.

Lucas van Leyden was a northern Renaissance painter and one of the greatest engravers of his time.

Much of Lucas's large production of engravings and woodcuts and a few etchings bear dates, from to , so that it is possible to follow his development and to establish a probable chronology for his paintings, only five of which are dated. In Lucas produced several masterpieces of engraving, including the large Ecce Homo and the Return of the Prodigal Son, both of which impressed Rembrandt more than a century later.

Lucas's Triumph of Mordecai was the basis for a painting by Rembrandt's teacher, Pieter Lastman. Lucas's close observation of nature, delight in landscape, and grotesque physiognomies were in the Dutch tradition. His best works are the early ones, in which these features predominate. Lucas was commissioned to make woodcuts to illustrate a number of books.

A series of seven large woodcuts, Pernicious Women ca. His graphic works dealt mainly with religious subject matter.