Flemish painter and engraver, part of a family of artists. The brothers Pieter Huys and Frans Huys (c. 1522-c. 1562) both worked as engravers for the print publisher Hieronymus Cock and the firm of Christoph Plantin. Together they were responsible for the engravings in the Vivae imagines partium corporis humani (Antwerp, 1566) published by Plantin. Pieter's own style, however, was best expressed in his paintings. Pieter became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1545. Among his other engravings for Plantin are the illustrations of one part of the Humanae salutis monumenta (Antwerp, 1571). Huys's style as a painter is apparent in two versions of the Temptation of St Anthony, one from early in his career (1547; Paris, Louvre) and the other from later (1577; Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh): he shows himself to be a creative follower of Hieronymus Bosch (who was still popular in the second half of the 16th century), but his figures are more lifelike and he used stronger colours and thicker brushwork. The subject-matter of Huys's painting of Hell (1570; Madrid, Prado) is entirely in keeping with Bosch, but the colouring is that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Bagpipe-player (1571; Berlin, Staatliche Museen) shows that Huys not only painted imaginary scenes but was also familiar with recent humanistic and Mannerist developments in painting, especially in Italy. It is a moralizing scene full of symbolism and several layers of meaning. Here he is allied to Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Marinus van Reymerswaele and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, all of whom achieved considerable success with such images among Flemish intellectuals. On the basis of these four signed and dated works, other paintings have been attributed to Pieter Huys, though there remains some confusion with the work of Jan Mandijn. //