Joos van Cleef

Joos van Cleef , c.1485-1540, Flemish portrait painter. Much of his life was spent in Antwerp. He is often identified with the Master of the Death of the Virgin from altarpieces in Munich and Cologne. Portraits of Henry VIII (Hampton Court) and Francis I (Johnson Coll., Philadelphia) are attributed to him. A Holy Family by Joos is in the National Gallery, London.

Joos van Cleve (b ?Cleves, c.1490; d Antwerp, 1540/1). Netherlandish painter, presumably from Cleves in the lower Rhine region and active mainly in Antwerp, where he became a member of the painters' guild in 1511. He seems to have been one of the city's leading painters, but his eclectic style and the lack of documented works mean that his career is ill defined. Some of the pictures attributed to him were formerly grouped under the name of the Master of the Death of the Virgin, called after two similar triptychs of this subject in Cologne (1515, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) and Munich (Alte Pin.). There is sometimes a flavour of Leonardo in his paintings, and he may have visited Italy. Almost certainly he worked in France in the early 1530s, and he possibly visited England at about the same time, as a portrait of Henry VIII (c.1536) in the Royal Collection is attributed to him. According to van Mander he collaborated with Joachim Patinir: a Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Mus. Royaux, Brussels) is possibly a joint work. The large output from his studio consisted mainly of religious works, particularly pictures of the Virgin and Child and the Holy Family. Joos's son Cornelis van Cleve (1520–67) was also a painter. He was known as Sotte Cleve (mad Cleve) after becoming insane in 1556—evidently a result of failing to win the patronage of Philip II of Spain (see Habsburg).