Pieter Claeissens the Elder
Pieter Claeissens the Elder (1500–1576), a Flemish painter of history and portraits, was the earliest of a large family of artists who lived at Bruges, where he was born. He was a pupil of Adriaan Bekaert, and was admitted into the Guild of St. Luke in that city in 1516, made a master in 1529, and dean in 1572. He died at Bruges in 1576. In the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels was a painting by him of a knight kneeling, with four sons, and in the Copenhagen Museum is a Man's Portrait by him. The name has been often written Claes, Claeis, Claeyssens, and Claeyssoone.
References
This article incorporates text from the article "CLAES, Pieter, the elder" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.