MOL, Pieter van
(b. 1599 Antwerpen, d. 1650 Paris)
Flemish painter. Once mistakenly considered a pupil of Rubens, he was actually an apprentice in 1611 with the little-known painter Siger van der Graeve and was received as master of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1622. It was suggested that Artus Wolffort, a minor follower of Peter Paul Rubens, may also have been van Mol’s master. Some of van Mol’s early paintings such as the Deposition (Reims, Musée St Denis) are stylistically close to Artus Wolffordt’s oeuvre.
In 1631 van Mol settled in Paris where he was appointed Painter to Queen Anne of Austria in 1642 and eventually participated in the founding of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1648.
