Biography

Flemish painter and etcher, part of a family of artists, son and pupil of Willem van Cleve I, brother of Marten van Cleve I. After his apprenticeship, he went to Italy, where he painted a signed and dated View of Rome (1550; private collection) and made a number of pen-and-ink drawings with views of Rome and Tivoli. Some of the drawings later served as models for the etched series Regionum, rurium, fundorumque, varii atque amoeni prospectus, published by Philip Galle in 1587, and were also copied by other painters.

Van Cleve became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1551-52 and according to van Mander he worked intensively for Frans Floris. Van Cleve produced numerous drawings of views of Rome, Florence, Naples and Genoa which are dated between 1584 and 1589, but it seems unlikely that he would have made a journey to Italy while in his sixties. We can assume that these drawings were copies or reworkings of his earlier work.