Early life and art in Ghent ,
self-portrait, 1506. Dürer bought Hornebolt's illumination of
The Savior in 1521. Hornebolt was an illuminator, and daughter of
Gerard Hornebolt and Margaret Svanders, who was the daughter of Derick Svanders and widow of Jan van Heerweghe. Susanna Horenbolt was related to
Lucas Horenbout. She started working for her father starting in 1520, and by 1521 she was known as a miniature painter and illuminator on the European continent. It was during that year that
Albrecht Dürer bought an illumination that she had made of
The Saviour when she was in Antwerp with her father.
Guicciardini and
Vasari "extol her excellence" as an illuminator. The Hornebolt family, associated with the
Ghent-Bruges school of manuscript illumination, was brought to England by
Henry VIII to create portrait miniatures like the religious illuminations to "represent God's approval of the Tudors as England's ruling family."
Jane Seymour's household She then came to England with her parents, Gerard and Margaret Hornebolt,
Marriage to Parker . The sitter, a 28-year-old woman in 1534, was once believed to be Susannah, but she was probably around 31 in 1534. Around 1525 or 1526 she was married to John Parker (c. 1493/4 September 1537), who was for
Henry VIII a Keeper of the Palace of Westminster, Yeoman of the King's Crossbows, and later Yeoman of the King's Robes. which may be titled
A Court Official of King Henry VIII and his wife and held in
Vienna's
Kunsthistorisches Museum. They had no children. Parker died in 1537. She was the second of Gilman's three wives and gentlewoman attendant to
Anne of Cleves. Two weeks after her marriage to Gilman, Hornebolt became a member of Queen Anne's privy chamber and was responsible for four servants. Henry of Twicknam married Isabell West, daughter of Thomas West. Hornebolt also had a daughter named Anne (born about 1541 to 1542). Hornebolt served in the household of
Catherine Parr until
Edward VI's reign, which began in 1547. In June of that year Hornebolt and her husband brought a case to the
Court of Requests against John Parker's heirs. She was described by authors Lorne Campbell and Susan Foister as "an excellent painter and illuminator, who had found the highest favour at the court of Henry VIII in England. Catherine Parr was said to have employed three women miniature painters and these were Susannah Hornebolt, Levina Teerlinc and
Margaret Holsewyther. ==In historical fiction==