• Was a Flemish Renaissance architect, engineer, painter, antiquarian, numismatist and economist.
• Born in Antwerp.
• He was a natural child of Wenceslas Coeberger and Catharina Raems, which was attested by deed in May 1579.
• His name is also written as Wenceslaus, Wensel or Wenzel; his surname is sometimes recorded as Coberger, Cobergher, Coebergher, and Koeberger.
• In 1573 he started his studies in Antwerp as an apprentice to the painter Marten de Vos.
• Cobergher left for Italy in 1579.
• On his way there he stayed briefly in Paris.
• He settled in Naples in 1580 and remained there till 1597.
• In Naples he worked under contract for eight ducats together with the Flemish painter and art dealer Cornelis de Smet.
• In 1591 he allied himself with another compatriot, the painter Jacob Franckaert the Elder (before 1551–1601).
• He moved to Rome in 1597 (as attested in a letter to
Peter Paul Rubens by Jacques Cools).
• During that time he had also been preparing a numismatic book in the tradition of
Hendrik Goltzius.
• After the death of his first wife Michaela Cerf, he married again, four months later and at the age of forty.
• His second wife was Suzanna Franckaert, 15-year-old daughter of Jacob Franckaert the Elder.
• He would have nine children with his second wife, while his first marriage had remained childless.
• During his stay in Italy he painted, under the name "maestro Vincenzo", a number of altarpieces and other works for important churches in Naples and Rome.
