Pieter Stevens II

[3] By April 1594 Stevens is recorded in Prague at his appointment as a court painter to the Emperor Rudolf II, with a salary of 8 guilders per month.

He must have died between 1626 and 1632 as in 1626 he was last recorded in connection with the funeral of his son Šroněk and in 1632 his daughter sold his house, for which she required a proxy of her brother, a sign that the artist was then deceased.

[5] He was an uncle of Maurus Moreels (II) of Mechelen who studied under him in Prague and had a successful career as a history and portrait painter upon his return to Flanders.

The earliest known work of Stevens is the Mountain valley with inn and castle, dated 1593 (Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel).

The composition is executed in a very refined finish and was possibly the work he made to support his application for a position at the Imperial court.

His contemporaries would probably have been more aware of the uncanniness of the sealed off, swampy valley with its ruinous castle, decaying inn and invalid wayfarers.

Landscape designs by Stevens and Jan Brueghel and others were reproduced in hardstone in the imperial workshop and used as 'Florentine mosaics' to decorate luxurious furniture.

He thanked his renown in his time to the reproduction of his designs by various engravers, including Aegidius Sadeler, Hendrik Hondius I, Isaac Major and Joannes Barra.