Jan Mostaert

Jan Jansz Mostaert
Jan Mostaert, Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America, better known as the West Indies Landscape
Born	c. 1475 Haarlem
Died	1555/1556 Antwerp
Nationality	Netherlandish
Known for	Painting

Jan Mostaert, also known by the names Joannes Sinapius and Master Of Oultremont (c. 1475 – 1555/1556) was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter of portraits and religious subjects, though his most famous creation was the West Indies Landscape.

According to Karel van Mander, Mostaert was born in Haarlem and had been a pupil of Jacob van Haarlem, the painter that painted the altarpiece of the Carrier's guild there in the St. Bavochurch. He was handsome, eloquent and polite, and claimed to be descended from the Haarlem knights of the Crusade to Damietta. He worked eighteen years as portraitist for Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. He died in Antwerp where he had been awarded a pension for life. Mostaert's name first appeared in city records in 1498, the year he married and bought a house in his birthplace. He is also mentioned in Haarlem archives from 1527 to 1554. In 1500 Mostaert was commissioned to paint the shutters for a receptacle housing the relics of Saint Bavo in the Groote Kerk, Haarlem. From this date he began to be listed in the records of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, and continued to be frequently listed until 1549. He became deacon of the painters' guild in 1507, and again in 1543 and 1544.

According to the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) he worked for the Regentess from 1503–1521, returned to Haarlem, and moved to Antwerp around 1552.

Mostaert's teacher Jacob van Haarlem may have actually been the anonymous Master of the Brunswick Diptych. Karel van Mander described several works in detail, including his strange landscape of the West Indies, which he considered to be an unfinished work. Much of Mostaert's work was destroyed in the great fire of Haarlem in 1576, and some paintings once attributed to him are now attributed to Adriaen Isenbrant.