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Wyngaerde, Anthonis [Anton] van den [Vigne, Antoine de la; Viñas, Antonio de las]
(b ?Antwerp, c. 1525; d Madrid, 1571). Flemish draughtsman, etcher and painter, active also in the northern Netherlands, Italy, France, England and Spain. Although few facts about his life are known, his movements can be reconstructed from his numerous topographical drawings, most of which are preserved in Vienna (Österreich, Nbib.; 53 drawings), Oxford (Ashmolean; 47 drawings), London (V&A; 31 drawings) and Antwerp (Plantin–Moretus Mus.; 23 drawings). He was apparently also active as a townscape painter, but none of his paintings is known. His earliest dated drawing is a View of Dordrecht (1544; Oxford). Also assigned to the mid-1540s is a panoramic View of London (Oxford), a drawing so large that, although previously kept rolled, it is now mounted as 14 separate sheets. In 1552–3 he was in Italy, where he made an elaborate etched View of Genoa, dated January 1553 (unique impression, Stockholm, Kun. Bib.) and probably drew views of Rome (e.g. four in Oxford; one in New York, Met.; one in Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and Naples (Oxford). By 1557 he was in the service of Philip II of Spain; that same year he accompanied Spanish troops and recorded battles in their campaign against the French. The following year he was back in the southern Netherlands, where he made a view of Brussels (1558; Oxford), among the last of his dated drawings of Dutch and Flemish cities. (Undated Netherlandish views, of Sluis, Damme, Bruges, Utrecht, Amsterdam and ’s Hertogenbosch, among others, were probably drawn before 1558.) Later the same year he was in England, where he remained until c. 1561, when he travelled to Spain. The finished and dated drawing of Richmond Palace from the River (1562; Oxford) was probably executed after he had arrived in Spain, using an earlier sketch or sketches made on the spot (for it includes, in the distance, a view of the spire of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, which was destroyed by fire in 1561).
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