Adrian Vanson

[1] Peter Matheeusen in his 1588 will left his cousin Adrian Vanson, named as "Adryan van Zont", portraits of his parents, Jacob and Agnes, and of himself, with a book The Arte concerning Lymning.

Amongst the other bequests, Matheussen left money to the miniaturist Isaac Oliver and the painter Rowland Lockey, best known as a copyist working for Bess of Hardwick and her son the Earl of Devonshire.

[6] These portraits of John Knox and George Buchanan had been sent to Geneva in November 1579 for inclusion as woodcuts in Theodore Beza's Icones (1580), but arrived too late for the book.

The woodcuts of Knox and James VI published in Simon Goulart's 1581 edition of the Icones are thought to follow Vanson's portraits.

[7] In October 1582, Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote to the French ambassador Michel de Castelnau in cipher code about a new type of portrait of James VI that he had sent her, presumably differing from the pictures made by Arnold Bronckorst.

However, technical investigation of portraits thought to be in the Vanson oeuvre reveal a variety of technique, pointing to the work of more than one artist, either in his or other workshops.

[15] Attributed portraits include James VI; Anne of Denmark; Patrick Lyon, Lord Glamis; Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean; Agnes Douglas, Countess of Argyll.

In May, a French ambassador in Scotland, the Baron d'Esneval, promised to get Mary, Queen of Scots a copy of a recent portrait of James VI from the only painter in Edinburgh, presumably meaning Vanson.

[30] The execution of Archibald Cornwall in April 1601 for attaching royal portraits to the gallows suggests that pictures of the king and Anne of Denmark were common household objects in Edinburgh.

Around the same time the goldsmith George Heriot made a chain with a miniature portrait of James as a diplomatic gift for an ambassador from the Duke of Mecklenburg, the queen's uncle.

[33][34] Although Vanson was still active, the Duke of Lennox later claimed that he had not been able to find a portrait painter in Scotland to send pictures of the royal family to the Venetian ambassador.