Flemish painter, one of several Northern Mannerist painters working in Rome in the sixteenth century. He belonged to a group of artists including Bartholomew Spranger, Karel van Mander and the sculptor Hans Mont of Ghent, who spent varying lengths of time in Rome studying the art of classical antiquity and the work of great Renaissance masters like Raphael and Michelangelo. He was a friend of the engraver Cornelis Cort, who was famed for his faithful reproductive prints. Speckaert painted Cort's portrait and was made his heir. They worked together on an engraving after Raphael's fresco of The Victory of Constantine over Maxentius. The engraving was still unfinished on Cort's death. Speckaert's art strongly influenced his Northern contemporaries, as can be seen, in particular, in the drawings of Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, and Karel van Mander. //