Diepenbeck, ABRAHAM VAN

Diepenbeck, ABRAHAM VAN, painter and draftsman, was born at Bois-le-Duc in 1607, or, according to other accounts, in 1596. He studied under Rubens in Antwerp, and after a residence in Italy, returned to be an assistant of that painter. He first devoted himself to glass-painting; but he soon turned to oil-painting and designing. Examples of his work in oils are in Paris, Dresden, and Vienna. His plates to Marolles' Tableaux du Temple des Muses (1655), engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert, were much admired. He visited England in the reign of Charles I., where he painted some windows, and was much employed by the Duke of Newcastle, for whom he executed various portraits and views, and drew the plates for that nobleman's famous folio on Horsemanship (1657). These plates are valuable not only for their excellence, but for the number of portraits they contain. He was elected president of the Antwerp Academy in 1641, a post which he retained till his death in 1675.