Gilles Coignet. A migrant painter from Antwerp and his Hamburg career

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The painter Gilles Coignet was born in Antwerp c. 1542 to a family of artists and scientists. He spent some time in Italy and, as a Lutheran Protestant, fled from Antwerp to Amsterdam in 1585. He lived in Hamburg since 1595, where he died in December 1599. Here he had contact with other Netherlandish artists. Van Mander reports that it was Coignet who advised Vredeman de Vries to move from Hamburg to Amsterdam in 1598. This contribution focuses on Coignet’s last years and sheds new light on the professional and social networks of exiled Netherlandish artists in Hamburg.