Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger

Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger spent his early years in Bruges, Belgium, where his father, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, was active as a painter and printmaker. When he was about seven, the family moved to London. Gheeraerts eventually obtained many commissions from the English court, both for portraits and for decorative work. He was the most distinguished and most fashionable portraitist of the 1590s, popular at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I. Following the death of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I, Gheeraerts's sitters came increasingly from the gentry.

Text © National Portrait Gallery, London