Abraham Godyn (1655/56 – after 1724)

• Was a Flemish painter.
• Born in Antwerp where he studied under the prominent history painter Hendrik Herregouts.

• He became in 1681 a member of the 'Sodaliteit van de Bejaerde Jongmans', a fraternity for bachelors established by the Jesuit order.

• Not long thereafter he travelled to Italy.

• He was in Rome where he became a court painter of the Pope and received the title of 'Painter of the Office of his Imperial and Catholic Majesty'.

• He moved on to Prague in 1690 where he worked as a court painter until 1698.

• He received a commission to paint frescos in the Troja Palace in Prague on which he worked with his brother Izaak.

• They worked in 1687 for Wenzel Albert Duke of Sternberg on the decoration of the Troja Palace in Prague.

• He is recorded back in Antwerp around 1711 where he became a member of the local Guild of Saint Luke in the same year.

• He joined in 1716 the Antwerp Confrerie of Romanists when it was reconstituted on purely religious grounds.

• He and Jan Pieter van Bredael the Younger were the last artists to become members of the Confrerie.

• In 1723 he became the dean of the Confrerie.

• One of his pupils was Marten Jozef Geeraerts.

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