Cornelis van Cleve (or van Cleef ) (born 1520 in Anvers, died 1567) was a Netherlandish

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. These artists, who span from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim...

 painter.

He was the son of Joos van Cleve

Joos van Cleve

Joos van Cleve was a painter active in Antwerp around 1511 to 1540. He was born around 1485 and died in between 1540 and 1541...

. From a 1604 writing by Karel van Mander, in he is misnamed Joos van Cleef geheeten den Sotten Cleef, we learn that Sotte Cleef moved to Englang around 1555, where he managed to get some commission from the royal court.

Works

His painting L'adoration des mages, descends from the tradition of Joos van Cleve

Joos van Cleve

Joos van Cleve was a painter active in Antwerp around 1511 to 1540. He was born around 1485 and died in between 1540 and 1541...

. In general his paintings show influences from Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

 and Andrea del Sarto

Andrea del Sarto

Andrea del Sarto was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. Though highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist senza errori , his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci,...

.

His painting Virgin and Child is exposed at the Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....

.

Further reading

• C. Justi, Der Fall Cleve, in Jb der preuss. Kunstsmlg., 16, 1895, p. 32.
• G. Hulin de Loo, Conjecture touchant le Sotte Cleve, in Petite Rev. illustrée de l'Art et de l'Archéol. en Flandre, 1903, pp. 87-91, 115-118.
• M. J. Friedländer, Nachtträgliches zu Cornelis van Cleve, in Oud Holland, LX, 1943, pp. 7-14; E.N.P., IXa, 1972, pp. 44, 49-50, 72-74.