Pieter van Mol

Pieter van Mol or Peter van Mol (17 November 1599 in Antwerp – 8 April 1650 in Paris) was a Flemish painter known for his history paintings of religious subject matter, and to a lesser extent for his allegorical compositions, genre scenes and portraits. His style was profoundly influenced by Rubens, Abraham Janssens and Artus Wolffort. He was court painter to the King and Queen of France.

Life He was an apprentice to the rather obscure painter Zeger van den Graeve in Antwerp from 1611 to 1622. He became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1623. He may also have been a pupil or assistant of Artus Wolffort as his style is close to that of Wolffort. Wolffort's compositions have on occasion been attributed to van Mol.

It is possible that Pieter van Mol accompanied Rubens in 1625 when he visited Paris to execute the Marie de' Medici cycle for the Galerie de Luxembourg.

In Paris Pieter van Mol first lived in the rue Saint Jacques and later in the rue Taranne where he died on 8 April 1650. One of his works depicting a nude woman was in the collection of Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun and an engraving of it was included in a catalog of le Brun's collection entitled 'Galerie des peintres flamands hollandais et allemands' published in 1778. Reportedly, the sale in Antwerp of prints after Pieter van Mol's work caused something of a scandal as they were considered more indecent than those of Agostino Carracci.

Selected works

in Canada : The Deposition from the Cross, Musée des beaux-arts, Montréal. in France : The Deposition from the Cross, église Notre-Dame, Calais. The Annunciation, Palais des beaux-arts, Lille. Adoration of the Shepherds, Musée des beaux-arts, Marseille. Young man wearing a mitre, attributed to Van Mol, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Christ taken down from the Cross, Musée du Louvre, Paris. The Deposition from the Cross, Musée des beaux-arts, Reims. in Rumania : The Lady of Sorrows, 1631, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu. The Descent from the Cross, National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest