Cornelis Ketel

Cornelis Ketel
The Company of Captain Rosecrans by Cornelis Ketel, 1588. The painting has been trimmed on all sides, especially at the top
Born	(1548-03-18)March 18, 1548
Died	August 8, 1616(1616-08-08) (aged 68)
Known for	Painting
Movement	Mannerism

Cornelis or Cornelius Ketel (18 March 1548 – 8 August 1616) was a Dutch Mannerist painter, active in Elizabethan London from 1573 to 1581, and in Amsterdam from 1581 to the early 17th century, now known essentially as a portrait-painter, though he was also a poet and orator, and from 1595 began to sculpt as well.

According to Ketel's biography, written by his contemporary Karel van Mander, he seems to have wanted to concentrate on the most prestigious of the hierarchy of genres, history painting, which included mythological subjects, but after he left France he is known almost entirely as a portrait-painter. Neither England nor Holland had much demand for large history paintings during his lifetime, and none of Ketel's histories or allegorical paintings are known to have survived intact, although drawings and prints survive. He did however significantly influence the development of the largest type of painting commonly produced in the United Provinces at this period, the civic group portrait.

Ketel was born out of wedlock in Gouda in 1548 and apprenticed to his uncle Cornelis Jacobsz. Ketel (died c. 1568) at age 11. He is said to have been encouraged to pursue a career in painting by the stained glass painter Dirck Crabeth, whose brother Wouter's wife may have been related to Ketel. He studied under Anthonie Blocklandt in Delft, c. 1565, before travelling to Paris where he lived with Jean de la Hame, glass-painter to King Charles IX. From Paris he went to Fontainebleau, where he was working in 1566, in the final years of the First School of Fontainebleau, a sojourn which was no doubt decisive in forming his taste for Mannerist allegory. He was forced to leave France in 1567 when all citizens of the Habsburg Netherlands were expelled.