HANS von ACHEN (AKEN). — German painter, belonging to the School of Cologne, b. 1552, d. 1615. In 1574 he went to Venice, where he came under the decisive influence of Tintoretto; then to Rome, where he painted an altarpiece for the church of the Gesù. In Florence he executed numerous portraits, among them those of Grand Duke Francesco and Giovanni da Bologna. He returned to Cologne in 1588 and was later summoned to the court of Munich, where, in many altarpieces and portraits, he developed a Mannerism similar to that of Peter Candid (de Witte) and Frans Sustris. On account of his reputation as a portraitist, he became, with Josef Heinz and Bartholomeus Spranger, court painter to Emperor Rudolf II, who sent him to Italy (Turin, Mantua, Modena, etc.), chiefly to copy Italian paintings. Josef Heinz was his pupil. His compositions were engraved by the Sadeler and Kilian families.
ACHEN (AKEN), HANS VON
Bibl.: E. Firmenich-Richartz, s.V. in Thieme-Becker, I, pp. 40-42; F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei Professori del Disegno, III, Florence 1846 (ed. F. Ranalli), pp. 30-33; A. Venturi, in Repertorium f. Kunst. VIII, Stuttgart 1885, pp. 10-23; R. V. Mander, Das Leben der Niederl. u. deutschen Maler, ed. Floerke, II, Munich 1906, p. 297; G. Dehio, Geschichte der Deutschen Kunst, III, Berlin 1913, p. 187.