CAREL

VAN

See also:

• CAREL VAN MANDER (1548-1606)

MANDER (1548-1606)  , Dutch painter, poet and biographer, was born of a noble family at Meulebeke . He studied under Lucas de Heere at Ghent, and in 1568–1569 under Pieter Vlerick at Kortryck . The next five years he devoted to the writing of religious plays for which he also painted the scenery . Then followed three years in Rome (1574-1577), where he is said to have been the first to discover the catacombs . On his return journey he passed through Vienna, where, together with the sculptor Hans Mont, he made the triumphal arch for the entry of the emperor Rudolph . After many vicissitudes caused by war, loss of fortune and plague, he settled at Haarlem where, in conjunction with Goltzius and Cornelisz, he founded a successful academy of painting . His fame is, however, principally based upon a voluminous biographical work on the paintings of various epochs—a book that has become for the northern countries what Vasari's Lives of the Painters became for Italy . It was completed in 1603 and published in 1604, in which year Van Mander removed to Amsterdam, where he died in 16o6 .