Cornelis Bloemaert

Cornelis Bloemaert II (1603 – 28 September 1692), was a Dutch painter and engraver, who after training in the Dutch Republic worked most of his career in Rome. His workshop in Rome played an important role in spreading Italian art throughout Europe and attracted many young engravers from abroad.

Biography Bloemaert was born in Utrecht. He studied with his father, Abraham Bloemaert, his brothers Hendrick and Adriaan, and his father's pupil, Gerard van Honthorst. Though originally trained as a painter, he devoted himself primarily to printmaking, which he learned from Crispijn van de Passe. He went to Paris in 1630, where he made engravings from among others, Michel de Marolles's Temple des Muses, before going to Rome in 1633. These prints were published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi around 1677 in Rome as part of a series of 15 unnumbered prints entitled Heroicae Virtutes Imagines quas eques Petrus Beretinus pinxit Florentiae (Images of heroic deeds painted by the painted by the knight Pietro Berrettini of Florence). Other printmakers who worked on this series include Coenraed Lauwers, Albert Clouwet, Jacques Blondeau, Lambert Visscher, Charles de La Haye, Jean Gerardin, François Spierre and Pierre Simon.

He died in Rome where he was buried on 28 September 1692.