This second edition was translated by Hessel Miedema into English and published in 1994-1997 together with a facsimile of the original and five volumes of notes on the text.

The parts are: The history of early Netherlandish painting was first described by the Italian Lodovico Guicciardini in his Descrittione di Lodovico Guicciardini patritio fiorentino di tutti i Paesi Bassi altrimenti detti Germania inferiore (1567; The Description of the Low Countries).

That tradition took little account of the geographic topology of the Low countries and the van Eyck brothers were considered the fathers of Netherlandish painting concentrated in Bruges.

Karel van Mander intended to correct this misconception by listing all the famous early Netherlandish painters.

His son would have relied on biographical information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections and notes.

Its leaders commissioned paintings depicting the city's glorious past, such as in the story of the crusade against Damietta, which was the basis for the Coat of arms of Haarlem.

Het Schilder-boek's biographies of ancient painters is almost entirely based on Pliny's Naturalis Historia and offers no new material.

Van Mander is less known for his translated work on Italian art than he is for his biographical sketches of Netherlandish painters.

For instance, the myth of the Titans assaulting Jupiter's throne could be interpreted as an illustration of the Christian dictum that pride is the cause of all evil.

[8] The final book about the depiction of figures contains a list of various animals, birds and other objects that can have meaning for the painter to include in his arrangement.

Cornelis de Bie (Gulden Cabinet, 1662), Joachim von Sandrart (Teutsche Akademie, 1675), Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten (Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, 1678), Filippo Baldinucci (Notizie de' Professori, 1681) and Arnold Houbraken (Schouburg, 1720) are some of the early biographers who used material from the Schilder-Boeck for their biographical sketches of Netherlandish painters or as a basis for developing their own art theory.

[11] The Lives of the illustrious Netherlandish and German painters was translated into modern Dutch and English by Miedema and published in the 1990s.

In his attempt to provide a systematic overview of the Lives, Miedema includes a long list of the sources on which Karel van Mander relied as he did for his own modern translation, and includes prints, photos of paintings, sculpture, architecture and stained glass window cartoons to illustrate the text.