Background
Carel van Mander I was born in May 1548, in Meulebeke.
historian painter Theoretician poet
Carel van Mander I was born in May 1548, in Meulebeke.
Mander I studied under Lucas de Heere in Ghent, and in 1568-1569 under Pieter Vlerick in Kortrijk.
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 September 2, 1606.
Carel van Mander I married an 18-year-old girl, with whom he had a son.