Van den Blocke was born in
Königsberg (today Kaliningrad),
Ducal Prussia, presumably the oldest of seven children of Dorothea and
Willem van den Blocke, a
Flemish sculptor and architect who had trained with
Cornelis Floris in
Antwerp. His brothers
Isaak, Jacob and David were painters. In 1584 the family lived in
Danzig (Gdańsk), where he was trained as a sculptor in his father's workshop. He moved to the
Netherlands for further studies in 1590-95 and became a citizen of Danzig in 1596. In 1597 van den Blocke became a master and established his own workshop in 1598. Van den Blocke died in Danzig in the same year as his father and brother Isaak, likely from an infectious disease. ==Work==