Chicken coop

1593–1607 · Workplace

Antwerp

1602

Becomes a master of the Guild of St Luke

After training with Hendrick van Balen, who was Anthony van Dyck’s first master, Snyders becomes a master of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1602.

1608 · Workplace

Rome

1610–1640

A close collaboration with Rubens

From the 1610s Snyders works with Rubens, who admires his ability to render the textures of fur and skin and often has him paint animals, fruit and still life in his own pictures; the collaboration is particularly close between 1610 and 1640. At first Rubens himself sketches the whole composition in oils and marks the place for Snyders’s contribution (“The Recognition of Philopoemen”, regarded as the first Baroque still life with figures), while in “Prometheus Bound” it is the reverse: Snyders makes the sketch, leaving space for Rubens’s figure. Contemporaries had difficulty telling their hands apart in joint works, and after Rubens’s death Snyders was one of the appraisers of the inventory of his collection.

1611

Married: Margareta Snyders

19 August 1657

Died