Pieter Gillis

Pieter Gillis (28 July 1486 – 6 or 11 November 1533), known by his anglicised name Peter Giles, the gallicized Pierre Gilles and sometimes the Latinised Petrus Ægidius, was a humanist, printer, and secretary to the city of Antwerp in the early sixteenth century.

[3] He seemed to have recommended the painter Hans Holbein the Younger to the court of England, where Thomas More received him delighted.

[3] Thomas More's Utopia, although fictional, includes Pieter Gillis as a character in Book I.

More dedicated Utopia to Gillis, who may have designed the Utopian alphabet.

They first met when diplomatic business brought More and Cuthbert Tunstall to Antwerp.

A woodcut of three men outdoors with another man walking towards them.
Pieter Gillis as Pet. Aegid. talks with Thomas More, Raphael Hythlodæus and another character in an illustration by Ambrosius Holbein for Utopia .