Jan van Cleve (III)

Displaying from an early age an interest and facility in art, he went to Brussels where he joined the workshop of the Flemish artist Luigi Primo who had worked for a long period of time in Italy.

While there is no documentary evidence for such apprenticeship, the stylistic closeness of van Cleve to de Crayer supports this fact.

[2] After de Crayer died, van Cleve was commissioned to complete his master de Crayer's unfinished works in various churches and to finish the cartoons for the tapestries ordered by the French king Louis XIV from the Antwerp tapestry workshops.

[2] Jan van Cleve painted altarpieces, allegorical pictures and mythological scenes.

[1] He was a prolific painter who was commissioned to produce many religious works for the churches and convents in Flanders and Brabant.