Denis van Alsloot

[2] Van Alsloot was exclusively working on the design of tapestries until 1606, the year in which he signed his first painting.

[4] Alsloot's career started to take off from the early 17th century after he was appointed court painter to Albert and Isabella, the governors of the Spanish Netherlands.

[2] Van Alsloot started out in the same profession as his father as a designer of cartoons for the local tapestry works in Brussels.

This is short for 'Serenissorum Archiducum Pictor', a reference to his official position as a court painter to Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella.

As van Alsloot's works are generally topographically accurate, it is possible to identify places that still survive, especially near the abbeys of Groenendael and Ter Kameren.

The style of his landscape paintings shows an affinity with the work of Gillis van Coninxloo.

As such his work appears to be a synthesis of the styles of van Coninxloo and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

[10] He was also commissioned by the court of Albert and Isabella to paint views of their estates at Mariemont and Tervuren and of the Abbey of Groenendael.

[4] He often collaborated with Hendrick de Clerck who painted the staffage in his landscape and mythological works.

There exist landscapes by van Alsloot not co-signed by the two painters in which the staffage was likely also made by de Clerck.

His most valuable commission by Archduchess Isabella was a series of eight paintings commemorating the Ommegang procession held in Brussels on 31 May 1615 for which he received 10,000 guilders.

[12] That year's Ommegang procession was particularly festive since two weeks earlier, at the jay-shooting ceremony of the Crossbowmen's guild, Isabella had successfully shot the jay that had been attached to the spire of the Church of Our Blessed Lady of the Sablon.