SCHOUBROECK, Pieter
(b. ca. 1570, Herzheim, d. ca. 1607, Frankenthal)

Biography

Flemish painter, active in Germany and Italy. Although he never visited the southern Netherlands, he is nevertheless regarded as belonging to the Flemish school. His father, Nicolaes Schoubroeck, was a Protestant clergyman who moved from Flanders to Frankenthal in 1586 to escape religious persecution. His mother, Clarken de Wale, was also from the southern Netherlands. Moreover, Pieter belonged to the community of Flemish artists known as the Frankenthal School. It is generally assumed that, while working there, he became a pupil of Gillis van Coninxloo.

He was in Rome in 1595 (as is known from a dated and inscribed landscape drawing, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris), while in 1597, 1599 and 1600 he was registered as living in Nuremberg. In 1600 he renounced his civic rights in that city and returned to Frankenthal, where he had married Catharina Caymox two years before. In 1600 his son Pieter was baptized, and Hendrik Mirou, father of the painter Antoine Mirou, another of the Frankenthal school artists, was the child's godfather.