of Rubens. The accepted view of Philip Fruytiers as principally a miniaturist and watercolorist was based partially on the descriptions in the early biographical works by Cornelis de Bie and Arnold Houbraken. Although Cornelis de Bie mentioned that Fruytiers also painted altarpieces, the only known works by his hand until the 1960s were works on paper or vellum. As a result, the established view about the nature of his work was not challenged. In the 1960s this view had to be revised, however, when three large paintings of saints dated 1652 with the monogram "PHF" (in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp), which were previously attributed to a hypothetical painter PH Franck, were identified as being by the hand of Fruytiers. The same signature was subsequently discovered on another altarpiece in the parish church in Zundert, North Brabant, which had been purchased from the inventory of the dissolved Antwerp St Michael's Abbey in 1802. This led to the attribution to Fruytiers of other paintings in collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp and the Museo del Prado in Madrid, and in the parish church of Gistel, West Flanders. Drawings for some of his altarpieces are kept in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. Fruytiers' style is generally much closer to the refinement and delicacy of Anthony van Dyck than to the more monumental art of Rubens. An expressive portrait drawing of the Jesuit Jan de Tollenaere (Johannes Tollenarius) (Morgan Library & Museum) was a study for an engraving made by Jacob Neefs. Fruytiers was an accomplished engraver and produced several portrait etchings such as those of the Capuchin Innocentius de Caltagirone and the Flemish mathematician and astronomer Govaert Wendelen. He made designs for the frontispiece and illustrations for devotional books and other religious prints by Antwerp engravers such as Cornelis Galle the Younger and Conraad Lauwers. One of his outstanding designs of a frontispiece is that for the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu a Provincia Flandro-Belgica eiusdem Societatis repraesentata, a book written by Jean Bolland and Godfrey Henschen was printed by Balthasar I Moretus at the Plantin Moretus press in Antwerp in 1640. The design which was engraved by Cornelis Galle the Elder. References External links 1627 births 1666 deaths Flemish Baroque painters Flemish portrait painters Flemish history painters