- NameJustus van Egmont
- Activity/Titlepainter
- Sexmale
- Variant namesnamnvariant: Jost van Egmont
namnvariant: Joost van den Egmont
- Nationality/DatesFlemish, born 1601, dead 1674
BiographyJustus van Egmont, who painted portraits and
history paintings, was born in Leiden in 1601. In
1615 Van Egmont travelled to Antwerp where he
became a pupil of Gaspard van den Hoecke and eventually
a master in the city’s Guild of St. Luke in 1628.
After a stay in Italy in 1618, he returned to Antwerp
where he worked for Rubens and Van Dyck. He
assisted Rubens, for instance, in his work on the series
of paintings for the Medici Gallery in the Musée du
Louvre and in the completion of The Last Supper as an
altarpiece for St. Rumbold’s Cathedral in Mechelen.
In 1628 Egmont was painting portraits in Paris,
where he helped to found the Academy of Art.
According to André Félibien, he cooperated with
Simon Vouet in his work on the production of cartoons
for tapestries, an activity that Van Egmont was
to develop later in producing a number of his own
cartoons for two series of tapestries, one in 1659
depicting the life of Julius Caesar and the other in
1661 on Anthony and Cleopatra. He worked in Brussels
for various periods before settling down in 1656
in Antwerp, where his portraits were to be influenced
greatly by French ideals. His portraits were popular
with his contemporaries and served as the basis of
engravings by Jeremias Falck, Willem Hondius and
Adriaen Lommelin, among others.