An Enigmatic Panel-Maker from Antwerp and his Supply to the Bruegels

The Brueg(h)el family was successfully active over a large period in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of the family members used rigid supports such as panels or copper plates for their paintings. Although panel-makers’ marks on panels employed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder are currently not known, both his sons and their artistic descendants have used panels marked or branded in one way or another. The focus of this paper is particularly one panel-maker’s mark associated with a certain Guilliam Aertssen (GA). The combination of a chronology of the GA marks with new biographical evidence reveals a complex web of Antwerp craftspeople and dealers involved in supplying the Brueg(h)els and their colleagues with panels for painting.