Frans Badens

Portrait of Frans Badens. 1610

Frans Badens (born Antwerp 1571) was a Flemish painter.

Life

Badens was born at Antwerp in 1571. He was the son of an obscure artist, by whom he was instructed in the principles of design, but later had the advantage of visiting Italy, where he remained for four years. On his return to the Netherlands he gave ample testimony of the advantages he had derived from his studies. Karel van Mander speaks of him in very favourable terms as a painter of history and portraits, and says that he excelled in painting conversation pieces. His style partook of the taste he had acquired in Italy, and, like most of the painters of his country, he was an excellent colourist. It is thought that he died at Amsterdam, but the year is not recorded.^[1]

An engraved portrait of Badens is included in Hendrick Hondius' Pictorium. The accompanying Latin verse begins with the line "addit picturae meliús nemo colores" , which translates as "no one was better at adding colours to a painting."^[2]

References

Sources

This article incorporates text from the article "BADENS, Frans" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.