a Flemish printmaker and painter associated with the English court of the mid-16th century and mainly remembered as the illustrator of the 1567 edition of Aesop's Fables. Gheeraerts is most noteworthy as a printmaker. He was a keen innovator and experimented with etching at a time when woodcut and engraving were dominant techniques. Less is known about Gheeraerts' color portraits or paintings as he never signed his work, and what does exist is identifiable only from stylistic considerations – a certain "fuzziness" and an attempt to imitate Flemish artists of the past such as Jan van Eyck.
