Dominicus Lampsonius

After Pole's death in 1558, he traveled to Liège where he was secretary to the successive Prince-Bishops (Robert of Berghes, Gerard of Grœsbeek, and Ernest of Bavaria).

He became friends and engaged in intensive correspondence with some of the leading humanists of his time such as Justus Lipsius, Janus Dousa, Johannes Livineius and Petrus Oranus.

[1] He provided the Italian historian Lodovico Guicciardini, then a resident of Flanders, with information for his history of the Low Countries entitled Descrittione di Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti i Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore (1567; The Description of the Low Countreys).

[2] He was a correspondent of the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari, who relied upon him for his notes about the life and works of the Liège painter Lambert Lombard.

[4] In a letter written to Vasari before the publication of the second edition of the Vite Lampsonius deplored the poor quality of recent prints of Italian art works, which, according to him, did not fully convey the excellence of the originals.

[5] He further conducted a regular correspondence with Giulio Clovio to whom he proposed a project to engrave Michelangelo's works in a skilful manner so that those who had not visited Rome could appreciate what they looked like.

[7] Since all the depicted artists were dead at the time of publication, Lampsonius included a dedicatory poem that qualified the work as a whole as an act of mourning and readers of the book are asked to ‘be the companions’ of the late Hieronymous Cock and his predecessors in a funeral procession.

'[10] The quality of the 23 prints was outstanding as they had been made by some of the leading engravers of the time such as Jan Wierix, Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Cort.