Hieronimo Custodis
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Elizabeth_Brydges_1589.jpg/200px-Elizabeth_Brydges_1589.jpg)
Hieronimo Custodis (also spelled Hieronymus, Heironimos) (died c. 1593) was a Flemish portrait painter active in England in the reign of Elizabeth I.[1]
Life and work
A native of Antwerp, Custodis was one of many Flemish artists of the Tudor court who had fled to England to avoid the persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands.[2] He is thought to have arrived in England sometime after the fall of Antwerp to the forces of the Duke of Parma in 1585.[1]
Three English portraits by Custodis signed and dated 1589 firmly establish him as resident in London by that year. Sir Roy Strong attributes a portrait of Sir Henry Bromley dated 1587 to Custodis, suggesting an earlier arrival, and has verified the recent attribution of a portrait of the young Edward Talbot dated 1586 to Custodis.[3] In 1591, he was living in the parish of St Bodolph-without-Aldgate where "Jacobus the son of Ieronyme Custodis A Paynter" was baptised on 2 March.[4] He is assumed to have died in 1593, as all of his known works are dated between 1589 and 1593, and his widow remarried that year.[1][4]
Custodis's unsigned but dated works are identified by "palaeographical peculiarities"[5] in the inscriptions which can be closely matched to those in his signed portraits.[1]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Hieronimo_Custodis_portrait_of_Elizabeth_Brydges_later_Lady_Kennedy_aged_14_inscription.png/250px-Hieronimo_Custodis_portrait_of_Elizabeth_Brydges_later_Lady_Kennedy_aged_14_inscription.png)
Gallery
- Edward Talbot, later 8th Earl of Shrewsbury, dated 1586
- Giles Brydges, 3rd Baron Chandos, signed and dated 1589
- Sir John Harington of Kelston, c. 1590–93[6]
- Sir John Ashburnham, 1593
Notes
- ^ a b c d Strong 1969, p. 195
- ^ Brown, Christopher. "British Painting and the Low Countries 1530–1630". In Hearn 1995, p. 27.
- ^ Weiss Gallery 2011, p. 20
- ^ a b Hearn 1995, p. 114
- ^ Strong 1963
- ^ Attribution by Roy Strong, 1969. A portrait of Harington's wife, Mary Rogers, in the Tate, formerly attributed to Custodis by Strong, is now attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger[1]. Portrait of Mary Rogers.
References
- Hearn, Karen, ed. Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630. New York: Rizzoli, 1995. ISBN 0-8478-1940-X
- Strong, Roy. The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture, 1969, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (Strong 1969)
- Strong, Roy. "Elizabethan Painting: An Approach Through Inscriptions. 1: Robert Peake the Elder." The Burlington Magazine 105 (February 1963): 53–57. Reprinted in Strong 1969.
- Weiss Gallery. Facing the Past: A catalogue of early portraiture 1530–1780, Weiss Gallery, London.
External links
Media related to Hieronimo Custodis at Wikimedia Commons
- 12 artworks by or after Hieronimo Custodis at the Art UK site