Pieter Claeissens the elder

Pieter Claeissens the Elder, 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.