He was also a doctor of law, legal advisor to the city of Leiden and representative of the County of Holland to the States General of the Habsburg Netherlands.

[4] He probably was a pupil of Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg until October 1572, when the capture of Leiden by the Protestant army caused the Catholic family to move to Antwerp, and then to Liège.

The contemporary Flemish biographer Karel van Mander relates that van Veen subsequently worked at the courts of Rudolf II in Prague and William V of Bavaria in Munich[5] Prague and Munich were at the time the key centres of Northern Mannerist art and hosts to important Flemish artists such as Joris Hoefnagel and Bartholomeus Spranger.

[2] Van Veen received numerous commissions for church decorations, including altarpieces for the Antwerp cathedral and a chapel in the city hall.

Firstly, they wanted to find a decent position for their beloved but ageing painter, and merely followed what had previously been done in 1572 when the great sculptor and medalist Jacques Jonghelinck had been made waerdeyn of the Antwerp Mint.

Secondly, they needed to put at the head of the Brussels Mint a competent person, since they were then involved in launching a new series of coins as part of a general monetary reform.

Van Veen appears not to have been very enthusiastic about his new appointment as he tried to resign not long after taking up his office and applied for another position in Luxembourg.

Van Veen gave Jacob de Bie, an Antwerp engraver, publisher and numismatist with an interest in ancient coins the position of maître particulier at the Brussels Mint.

The maître particulier was in charge of buying the required quantity of precious metals and organizing the coin production.

[15] The Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata was circulated widely during the 17th and 18th centuries and was copied and pirated in France, Spain, Italy and England.

The Amorum emblemata pictures 124 putti, enacting mottoes of, and quotations by, lyricists, philosophers and ancient writers on the powers of Love.

The accompanying motto in Dutch reads: d’Een lief sich gheern laet van d’ander ’t hert doorwonden/De schichten niemant wijckt, maer elck sijn borste biedt/Om eerst te zijn ghequetst, d’een d’ander niet en vliedt:Want sy met eenen wil in liefde zijn ghebonden.

In English translation: "The one lover gladly lets the other one pierce its heart, neither dodges the arrows, but rather offers its chest to be the first one to be wounded, neither flees the other because they are bound in love in one desire".

Further quotations by Seneca the Elder, Philostratus and Cicero, printed above the Dutch and French mottoes, address a similar theme on the same page.

[19] The Amoris divini emblemata was published in 1615 in Antwerp by Martinus Nutius III and Jan van Meurs.

Amoris divini emblemata was the starting point of a new tradition in religious emblem books and had an important influence on Herman Hugo's Pia desideria (1624).