The history of early Netherlandish painting was first described by the Italian
Lodovico Guicciardini in his (1567; The Description of the Low Countries). This book formed a source for
Giorgio Vasari's famous biographical accounts of painters in his book
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, often referred to as the . That tradition took little account of the geographic topology of the
Low Countries and the
van Eyck brothers were considered the fathers of Netherlandish painting concentrated in
Bruges. Karel van Mander intended to correct this misconception by listing all the famous early Netherlandish painters. He encountered many difficulties in obtaining accurate information, due to the political and religious unrest at the time. The biographies in the are similar in style and format to Vasari's . Karel van Mander digresses only rarely from the format: starting per painter with an overview of the childhood years and a list of teachers, followed by some career information and concluding with a list of notable works. The second edition includes a biography of van Mander himself that Miedema believes was written by his brother, who may have been with him on his deathbed. Other candidates have been proposed as authors of the biography. Recently his son
Karel van Mander the Younger was identified as a possible author. His son would have relied on biographical information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections and notes. The information in the biographical sketch is not entirely reliable but is still regarded as the best source of information on van Mander's life. Dominicus Lampsonius was an important source for Karel van Mander, through both his letters to Vasari and his publication
Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae Inferioris effigies, a work he published together with Hieronymus Cock in 1572. Van Mander was writing in a country where
Calvinists were powerful and religious art was regarded with suspicion. The market for religious subjects was quickly replaced in favor of genre scenes and historical allegories. It became fashionable to choose politically correct subjects such as stories too old to be offensive to either Protestants or Catholics. The city of Haarlem needed to reinvent itself after losing its attraction as a pilgrimage site for St.
Bavo. Its leaders commissioned paintings depicting the city's glorious past, such as in the story of the crusade against
Damietta, which was the basis for the
Coat of arms of Haarlem. Artists and writers helped update the local source of inspiration for art. Van Mander contributed to this effort by supplying a list of biographies of ancient painters in
Lives of Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman painters and his commentaries on
Ovid's Metamorphoses and the depiction of figures. ==The six parts of the ==