Justus van Egmont

Variant namesprimary name: Justus van Egmont name variant: Jost van Egmont name variant: Joost van den Egmont

DatesBiographical dates: 1601 - 1674 Dead: dead 1674 Born: born 1601

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BiographyBiography: Justus 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.

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