Hieronymus Wierix was born in Antwerp as the son of Anton Wierix I (c. 1520/25–c. 1572). His father Anton was registered in the
Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp as a painter in the Guild year 1545–6 but is occasionally also referred to as a cabinet maker. It is not believed that Anton I taught Hieronymus or his other two sons
Johannes and Anton II. Hieronymus and Johannes are believed to have trained with a goldsmith while Anton II likely trained with an older brother, probably Johannes. Hieronymus was deemed a child prodigy as he started to engrave in 1565 at age 11 and produced excellent copies after Dürer a year later. He worked only briefly for the
Plantin Press in Antwerp, realizing about 10 engravings in the period 1569—1571.{{cite book |last1= Bowen |first1=Karen L.|last2=Imhof |first2=Dirk|date=17 April 2008 |title=Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-Century Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CP8lSx9i83EC&pg=PA142|page=48|publisher=Cambridge University Press Listed as
Lutherans at the time of the
Fall of Antwerp in 1585, the family members seem to have reconverted to Catholicism soon thereafter. The three Wierix brothers gained a reputation for their disorderly conduct as evidenced by a 1587 letter by prominent publisher
Christophe Plantin to the Jesuit priest Ferdinand Ximenes in which he complained that whoever wanted to employ the Wierix brothers had to look for them in the taverns, pay their debts and fines and recover their tools, since they would have pawned them. Plantin also wrote that after having worked for a few days the brothers would return to the tavern. During one of his drinking bouts he injured the head of a certain Clara van Hove who died from her injuries. He spent about two years in jail as a result. His apprentices were Abraham van Merlen, Jan Baptist van den Sande the elder, and Jacob de Weert. His daughter Christina married the engraver
Jan Baptist Barbé, who later had his other daughter Cecilia (his sister-in-law) declared insane in order to claim her inheritance, which included a set of Dürer drawings owned by her father. ==Work==