Hieronimo Custodis

Hieronimo Custodis (also spelled Hieronymus, Heironimos) (died c. 1593) was a Flemish portrait painter active in England in the reign of Elizabeth I.^[1]

Signed and dated portrait of Elizabeth Brydges, aged 14, daughter of Giles Brydges, 3rd Baron Chandos, and maid of honour to Elizabeth I, 1589

Life and work

A native of Antwerp, Custodis was one of many Flemish artists of the Tudor court who had fled to England to avoid the persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands.^[2] He is thought to have arrived in England sometime after the fall of Antwerp to the forces of the Duke of Parma in 1585.^[1]

Three English portraits by Custodis signed and dated 1589 firmly establish him as resident in London by that year. Sir Roy Strong attributes a portrait of Sir Henry Bromley dated 1587 to Custodis, suggesting an earlier arrival, and has verified the recent attribution of a portrait of the young Edward Talbot dated 1586 to Custodis.^[3] In 1591, he was living in the parish of St Bodolph-without-Aldgate where "Jacobus the son of Ieronyme Custodis A Paynter" was baptised on 2 March.^[4] He is assumed to have died in 1593, as all of his known works are dated between 1589 and 1593, and his widow remarried that year.^[1][4]

Custodis's unsigned but dated works are identified by "palaeographical peculiarities"^[5] in the inscriptions which can be closely matched to those in his signed portraits.^[1]

Characteristic inscription by Custodis, from the signed and dated portrait of Elizabeth Brydges

Gallery

• 
  Edward Talbot, later 8th Earl of Shrewsbury, dated 1586
• 
  Giles Brydges, 3rd Baron Chandos, signed and dated 1589
• 
  Sir John Harington of Kelston, c. 1590–93^[6]
• 
  Sir John Ashburnham, 1593