Personalities Custos, Dominicus

Flemish painter and engraver. Founder of the dynasty of engravers in Augsburg. Son of painter and engraver Pieter Balten (a.k.a. Pieter Custodis). About 1579 he moved to Augsburg (Germany). He served at the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. He released several albums of engraved portraits of rulers, public officials, noblemen and celebrities: “Fuggerorum et Fuggerarum Imagine” (1593), “Tirolensium principum comitum” (1599), “Atrium heroicum” (1602–1604) and others. In Augsburg, he married the widow of the jeweler Bartholomew Killian, the father of the future engravers Wolfgang and Lucas Killian, whom Dominicus taught the art of engraving. He founded an engraving workshop in which the Killian brothers and later the engraver's sons, Raphael, David and Jacob, worked.