Pieter Claeissens the Elder

Pieter Claeissens the Elder or Pieter Claeissens (I) (1500–1576) was a Flemish painter of history paintings, portraits and allegorical scenes. He was the first prominent artist in an extended family of artists from Bruges.

Life Pieter Claeissens the Elder was born in Bruges as the son of Alard Claeissens who was also a painter.

He married Marie Meese. Of their five sons, the four youngest would become artists: Gillis, Pieter and Antoon became painters while Ambrosius became a master goldsmith.

Recently a number of works attributed to Pieter the Elders have been re-attributed to his son Gillis. This includes a triptych painted for Claeys van de Kerchove and his family as an epitaph for the family tomb in the church of St Catherine in Assebroek. The panels of the triptych executed in 1576 are now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, where they are still attributed to Pieter Claeissens the Elder.

Among recent attributions to Pieter Claeissens the Elder are a number of works that were formerly attributed to Ambrosius Benson such as, for example, the Holy Ursula (Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias). The kinship in a number of stylistic features between Claeissens and Benson and the resulting confusion between their oeuvres has given rise to the hypothesis that Pieter may have worked in the Benson workshop from 1520 to 1530 when he became a master in his own right.

The Claeissens workshop produced works in which the influence of the painters Adriaen Isenbrandt and Ambrosius Benson who were active in Bruges as well as the modernizing tendencies of the Pieter Pourbus are transformed into a personal style. The figures and compositions are designed according to stereotyped and repetitive patterns that were successful in Bruges.