Biography

Denys was born and died in Antwerp. According to Houbraken he went to Rome to study the masters and spent three years copying the works of 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...

 and Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...

. His patrons were the Duke of Mantua, Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat, and the Duke of Florence, Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany

Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany

Cosimo III de' Medici was the penultimate Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany. He reigned from 1670 to 1723, and was the elder son of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. Cosimo's 53-year long reign, the longest in Tuscan history, was marked by a series of ultra-reactionary laws which regulated prostitution and...

, who rewarded him with a gold chain. He painted room decorations there and in Mantua with his father, the painter Frans Denys

Frans Denys

Frans Denys , was a Flemish Baroque painter.-Biography:He became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1631 and got married the next year to Martina Vleckhamer, who died in 1647, so he was married for the second time when his son Jacob was born...

, but when his father died he returned to Antwerp.

According to the RKD he was in Italy from 1666 to 1680. In 1679 he was back in Antwerp where he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke as "winemaster". He remained in Antwerp until 1693, and is registered in Rome in 1702. He is known for portraits and landscapes. He collaborated on a flower garland with Daniel Seghers

Daniel Seghers

Daniel Seghers was a Jesuit brother and Flemish Baroque painter who specialized in flower still lifes, and is particularly well-known for his contributions to the genre of "flower garland" painting. His paintings were collected enthusiastically by courtly patrons and he had numerous imitators...

whereby the centerpiece was by his hand of the holy family.