Hieronimo Custodis (also spelled Hieronymus, Heironimos) (died c. 1593) was a Flemish portrait painter active in England in the reign of Elizabeth I.[1]
A native of Antwerp, Custodis was one of many Flemish artists of the Tudor court who had fled to England to avoid the persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands.[2] He is thought to have arrived in England sometime after the fall of Antwerp to the forces of the Duke of Parma in 1585.[1]
Three English portraits by Custodis signed and dated 1589 firmly establish him as resident in London by that year. Sir Roy Strong attributes a portrait of Sir Henry Bromley dated 1587 to Custodis, suggesting an earlier arrival, and has verified the recent attribution of a portrait of the young Edward Talbot dated 1586 to Custodis.[3] In 1591, he was living in the parish of St Bodolph-without-Aldgate where "Jacobus the son of Ieronyme Custodis A Paynter" was baptised on 2 March.[4] He is assumed to have died in 1593, as all of his known works are dated between 1589 and 1593, and his widow remarried that year.[1][4]
Custodis's unsigned but dated works are identified by "palaeographical peculiarities"[5] in the inscriptions which can be closely matched to those in his signed portraits.[1]