Willem Key (1515-1568)

• Was a Flemish Renaissance painter.
• Key was born in Breda, Netherlands.
• Following in his older brother Wouter’s footsteps, Willem went to Antwerp to become a painter. 
• In 1529 he was known to be a pupil of Pieter Coecke van Aelst in Antwerp.
• Later, together with Frans Floris, he took lessons from Lambert Lombardus in Liège.
• He became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1540.
• He was a rich man who lived in a large house in the center of town near the exchange.
• He became specialized in flattering portraits and made a good living from theatrically posed group portraits.
• The artist’s biographer and painter Karel van Mander tells us that Key was blessed with ‘Sulcke edele gheesten,’ such a noble mind.
• And, he had a ‘Docta manus,’ a learned hand, as the Bruges humanist and painter Domenicus Lampsonius phrased this topos in 1572.
• Mander mentions several larger pieces by his hand that were burned during the Beeldenstorm.
• In particular he mentions a destroyed group portrait of the market-sellers on an altar of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal in Antwerp.
• According to the Rijksmuseum, Adriaen Thomasz Key was a distant relation and his pupil.
• The displayed painting is a crop from Willem Key, Susanna and The Elders, c. 1546.
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