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.