1520 – Antwerp – 1584

There is very little information available on Pieter Huys. He was the son of the landscape painter Adriaen Huys, who died in 1552 and whose works remain unknown to this day. He began his artistic training in his father's workshop and in 1545, he was accepted as a master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp. The same year, he entered the service of Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570), a painter, engraver, printer and print dealer. It is very likely that Huys became familiar with the world of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose influence can clearly be seen in his art, through engraving. As of 1560, he collaborated with the Antwerp printer and bookbinder Christoffel Plantijn, with whom he produced illustrations for various books. However, there is little evidence of his pictorial production: only four signed and dated paintings have been preserved, although other works can be attributed to him with certainty, such as the St. Christopher in the Oskar Reinhart collection in Winterthur.

Pieter Huys' corpus is composed of paintings with scenes of diableries, combining phantasmagorical visions of a strange world and monstrous characters from the imaginary universe developed by Bosch and his followers. More amusing than disturbing, these diabolical paintings were characteristic of the craze for diableries in the 16th century and established Pieter Huys as an important painter. As part of the second generation of painters following Hieronymus Bosch, he painted in the same vein as the master of 's-Hertogenbosch, which led him to be considered for a long time as a simple follower. Nevertheless, an in-depth study of his work reveals the use of original forms and personal inventions that testify to the boldness of the Antwerp artist. An excellent colourist, Pieter Huys has a different approach to these models, with a figuration closer to nature and the use of a thick paste that allows the creation of solid forms. His pictorial style, his ingenuity and his technique make him a truly unique painter.