Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533)

Dutch painter and engraver. Active in Leiden and Antwerp, he was a pioneer of Netherlandish genre scenes, for example The Chess Players (c. 1510; Staatliche Museen, Berlin). His woodcuts and engravings, often more highly regarded than his paintings, were inspired by Albrecht Dürer.

Lucas was a pupil of Cornelisz Engelbrechts. He settled at Antwerp, where he met Dürer in 1521. Though the engravings and woodcuts by which he won early fame show Dürer's influence, they possess a distinctive charm and inventiveness of their own which is characteristic in all his work. His paintings show an Italian influence, his unusual colour and pictorial imagination being exemplified in Lot and his Daughters (Louvre, Paris).

Lucas earned a high reputation in his own day, even being praised by the Italian artist and art historian Vasari.