Flemish painter. He is mentioned in the archives of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke as ‘Cornelis Jacops de Zeeu’ in 1558. He was a portrait painter, active in Antwerp and in the first half of the 1560s in England.
The sitter is a young man aged 23, depicted in a black beret.
Alternatively, this painting could be attributed to Pieter Pourbus.
This portrait of an unknown gentleman (sometimes called ‘Sir William Cordell’) was painted in the year in which the artist came to England, from the Netherlands, to work.
The inscription tells us that this young man was 19 years of age when Cornelis de Zeeuw painted his portrait in 1565. This was the year in which the artist came to England, from the Netherlands, to work. The artist has recorded the young man’s features carefully, noting the rather soft, sparse moustache. His large, expressive eyes make him seem rather serious, and the close ‘cropping’ of the portrait intensifies his gaze.
There exists a type of painting in the 16th Century representing a bourgeois family sitting at table. These family portraits depict prosperous families whose members, belonging to various generations, are ranged around a covered table. Contemporary family portraits by Cornelis de Zeeuw and Maerten van Heemskerck are good examples of this genre.
Pierre de Moucheron (1508-1567) was the son of a Norman noble. He became he became a burgess of Middelburg in 1530 and built up a thriving trading company. In 1545 he moved his business to Antwerp. In this family portrait he is depicted with his wife Isabeau de Berbier and their eighteen children, their son-in-law Allard de la Dale, and their first grandchild.
