Maarten de Vos was born in Antwerp in 1532 and died there in 1603. His father Pieter de Vos was also a painter and he studied first with him and then with Frans Floris, one of the first to bring Mannerism to Antwerp. In 1551 de Vos left Floris and went to Rome, where he studied the works of Michelangelo and then to Venice where he became first the pupil, then the friend and collaborator of Tintoretto. He was highly successful in Italy, executing commissions for the Medici among others. In 1558 he returned to Antwerp where he listed as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke, the patron saint of painters, and where he worked as a painter executing portraits and large commissions for churches. in 1571 and 1572, he served as Dean of the Guild of St. Luke. In 1584, he was documented as a Lutheran, but returned to Catholicism in 1585, by which time Antwerp was under the control of the Spanish armies. He executed some engravings, but he was far more prolific as a source of drawings that were then engraved and published by others. D. de Hoop Scheffer estimates that deVos provided publishers with drawings from which about 1600 engravings were made during the16th and early 17th centuries. Among the artists who worked with his drawings, were Jan Sadeler (1550-1600), Crispin de Passe, the Wierix brothers, Adrien Collaert (c. 1560-1618), and Karel de Mallery (c, 1576-after 1631), two of Philips Galle's sons-in-law, and Adrien's brother Hans / Jan Collaert (1566-1628). Among the publishers, Philips Galle, Jan Galle, Adrien Collaert, Jan Sadeler, and Raphael Sadeler appear in the New Hollstein catalogue raisonné of engravings after his drawings.

Select Bibliography: M. M. L. Netto-Bol, So-called Maarten de Vos sketchbook of drawings after the antique (The Hague, Staatsuitgeverij, 1976: Vol. IV of the series "Kunsthistorische Studiën van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome); C. Schuckman, Maarten de Vos, 1532-1603 (Rotterdam: Sound & Vision, 1995/96. 3 vols. Together 850 pp., ca.1600 ills. Vols XLIV - XLVI in the Hollstein's Dutch and Flemish series); A. Zweite, Studien zu Marten Vos. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antwerpener Malerei in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Georg-August-Universität, 1974); A. Zweite, Marten de Vos als Maler. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Antwerpener Malerei in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 1980). The most current information about the contribution of the Collaert brothers to these two sets of engravings is to be found in Marjolein Leesberg and Arnout Balis, ed. The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450-1700: The Collaert Dynasty, 4 volumes (Rotterdam: Sound & Vision Publishers, 2005). The Old Testament Women can be found in Part One; the New Testament in Part 2.