Jan Soens

According to Karel van Mander he moved to Antwerp to live with a schoolmaster named Jacob Boon, whereupon he taught himself the rudiments of painting.

[1] After becoming proficient, he moved in with the painter Gillis Mostaert, and assisted him creating landscape paintings in the manner of Gillis' twin brother Frans Mostaert.

[1] A few of these early landscapes could be seen in Amsterdam at the home of Hendrick Louwersz Spieghel at the time Karel van Mander was writing in 1604.

[2] He was particularly active from 1575 with the Farnese in Rome, and in Piacenza and Parma in the early seventeenth century.

[3] He painted history works, such as the mannerist Jupiter and Antiope,[4] as well as religious paintings reflecting the Council of Trent's decrees on art and Counter Reformation ideals of clearly represented piety.