page_title: Franciscus van der Steen
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Franciscus van der Steen / Life
caption_attribution_description: Grafik aus dem Klebeband Nr. 2 der Fürstlich Waldeckschen Hofbibliothek Arolsen Motiv: Ferdinand III.
context_page_description: Franciscus van der Steen was a Flemish painter and engraver who was active in Vienna. He is now mainly known for his reproductive prints after master paintings and various publications containing portraits of prominent persons. No known paintings are currently attributed to him.
context_section_description: Franciscus van der Steen is believed to have been born in Antwerp somewhere between 1615 and 1635. In the guild year 1638-39 he registered as a pupil of the engraver Alexander Voet the Elder in the registers of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke.
  He became a master in the Antwerp Guild in the guild year 1643-1644.  He is one of the Flemish and Dutch artists, such as Nikolaus van Hoy, Jan Anton van der Baren and Jan van Ossenbeeck, who followed Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the art loving governor of the Southern Netherlands, upon his return to Vienna in 1656.
  Shortly after his arrival in Vienna in 1656, van der Steen asked the court chancellery for court quarters (i.e. accommodation) and in the same year he was appointed court etcher to Emperor Ferdinand III with an annual income of 1200 gulden. This sum was reduced to 800 gulden the following year.
  Franciscus van der Steen operated a workshop in Vienna. On  8 January 1662, van der Steen signed his name in the ecclesiastical registers of the Schottenkirche (Scottish church) in Vienna as he, together with the Flemish painter Jan de Herdt, acted as a witnesses at the wedding of the Dutch landscape painter Hans de Jode.  Van der Steen and Jan de Herdt later collaborated on a series of aristocratic portraits for the publication Historia di Lepoldo Cesare. 
  His compatriot, the landscape painter Renier Meganck, joined his workshop around 1670.  In 1671 Meganck acted as a witness and sealed the last will of Franciscus van der Steen.  Van der Steen died not much later in early 1672.
caption: Portrait of Emperor Ferdinand III, after Jacob Toorenvliet
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