had at some point become a Mennonite and was therefore a possible target of these zealots. In Kortrijk he got a commission for an altar piece. In Kortrijk another son was born. He left Kortrijk for Bruges in 1582 because of an outbreak of the plague and other reasons. In Bruges, he worked with the painter Paul Weyts. Because of the threat of religious troubles and the plague, Karel fled with his family and his mother-in-law by ship to the Dutch Republic where he settled in Haarlem in the province of Holland in 1583. Here he worked for 20 years on a commission by the Haarlem city fathers to inventory "their" art collection. The city of Haarlem had confiscated all Catholic religious art after the satisfactie van Haarlem, which gave Catholics equal rights to Protestants, had been overturned in 1578. Van Mander used his work on the commission in his "Schilder-boeck". While in Haarlem he continued to paint, concentrating his energy on his favourite genre: historical allegories. In 1603 he rented a fortified manor ("het Huis te Zevenbergen"), later renamed Kasteel Marquette in Heemskerk to proofread his book that was published in 1604. He died soon after it was published in Amsterdam at the age of 58. Haarlem Mannerists Karel van Mander was the founder, together with Hubertus Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, of an "academy to study after life". It is not entirely clear what this academy did but it is believed it was an informal discussion group which may have organised drawing classes with life models. It has also been claimed that the nature of the academy was more of a literary nature. He had an important impact on art in the Dutch Republic when in 1585 he showed his friend Hendrick Goltzius drawings by Bartholomeus Spranger. Spranger was then the leading artist of Northern Mannerism and was based in Prague as the court artist of emperor Rudolf II. These drawings had a galvanising effect on Goltzius whose style was influenced by them. Goltzius made engravings of the drawings which were important in disseminating the Mannerist style. Van Mander, Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem became known as the "Haarlem Mannerists" and artists from other towns joined the movement. Their pictorial language was characterised by a strong awareness of style and cultivated elegance. They strived for artful ingenuity rather than naturalism. They also had a preference for depicting exaggeratedly