Willem van Nieulandt (1584-1635)

Willem or Guiliam van Nieulandt, sometimes Nieuwelandt (1584–1635) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, engraver, poet and playwright from Antwerp. His father Adrien van Nieulandt the elder was born to a family of artists of Flemish origin from Antwerp. He moved with his family to Amsterdam in 1589, after the Siege of Antwerp, probably because they were Protestants. His three sons Willem van Nieulandt II (named for his uncle, also a painter), Adriaen van Nieulandt the younger, and Jacob van Nieulandt all became painters. According to Arnold Houbraken, Willem was a pupil of Roelant Savery in Amsterdam, and he left him to travel to Rome, where he became a student of Paulus Bril. He specialized in painting artistic ruins of monuments, arches, and temples, many of which he then engraved himself. He returned to Amsterdam (via Antwerp) in 1607, and became a respected poet there as well as Italianate painter. At some point after May 1629 he returned to Amsterdam, where he lived until his death in 1635.