Albert Simonsz

Albert Simonsz a distinguished historical painter, born at Haarlem in 1523, told Karel van Mander in 1604 that he had been a scholar of Jan Mostaert 60 years previously when Mostaert himself was already an old man of 70.[1] Van Mander noted his remark because Simonsz also said that Mostaert had claimed he had never heard of Ouwater (or Geertgen tot Sint Jans). The 18th-century writer Jacobus de Jongh was the first to extrapolate Simonsz' birth year from his statements to Karel van Mander. Simonsz clearly lived to a great age, but the exact year of his death after 1604 is not recorded. Though no known works survive, Hessel Miedema in his more recent edition of the Schilder-boeck wonders whether he isn't the same "Aelbert symonssen" mentioned in a document in the Haarlem archives who was paid 15 florins in 1592-1593 for making several copies of maps of Haarlem after the one by mayor Thomas Thomassen, and who was also paid 25 florins for making one copy of a map made in 1570 of the boundary of Rhineland after Joost Janssen of Amsterdam.[2]

References

1. Albert Simonsz in The life of Albert van Ouwater in Karel van Mander's Schilderboeck
2. Miedema, Vol II, p. 259

Sources

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Albert, Simon". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons. p. 12.