13 Facts About Cornelis Ketel

Cornelis or Cornelius Ketel was a Dutch Mannerist painter, active in Elizabethan London from 1573 to 1581, and in Amsterdam till his death.

Cornelis Ketel did however significantly influence the development of the largest type of painting commonly produced in the United Provinces at this period, the civic group portrait.

Cornelis Ketel later traveled to Paris where he lived with Jean de la Hame, glass-painter to King Charles IX.

Cornelis Ketel was forced to leave France in 1567 when all citizens of the Habsburg Netherlands were expelled.

Cornelis Ketel introduced the full-length group portrait format to the Dutch burghers with great success, and seems to have been mostly commissioned as a portraitist.

Cornelis Ketel painted some religious subjects; it is likely he was Remonstrants, just as his friend Hendrick de Keyser, the city architect and sculptor.

Cornelis Ketel's son Thomas de Keyser is thought to have been pupil of Cornelis van der Voort and van der Voort was born on ca.

Cornelis Ketel quickly established himself as a successful painter of portraits in London.

Karel van Mander records that Cornelis Ketel was patronized by the prosperous German Hansa merchants of the Steelyard and that a Force overcome by Wisdom and Prudence commissioned from him and presented to Sir Christopher Hatton introduced him to court circles.

In 1577 Cornelis Ketel was commissioned to paint a series of 19 portraits for the Cathay Company, one of which is the famous full-length of Martin Frobisher now in the Bodleian Library.

Together with Pieter Pietersz, Cornelis Ketel was the leading portraitist in Amsterdam for many years, and one of the generation of Dutch portrait-painters whose increasingly sophisticated work laid the foundations for their much more famous successors.

Cornelis Ketel lived across Oude Kerk, where he bought in 1593 a house on the so-called "Velvet Canal".

Cornelis Ketel seems to have kept a stock of drawings of poses, from which a patron might choose, and which could be worked up by studio assistants without the sitter's presence being required.