Pieter van den Keere (also Peter Kaerius) was born in 1570/1571 in Gent, the son of the printer and type founder Hendric van den Keere the Younger. Because of religious unrest and persecution, he fled his homeland for England and worked in London as an engraver. Early plates by Van den Keere can be found in John Norden's "Speculum Britanniae" (1593), including ariel views of London and Westminster Abbey. In 1596, Van den Keere returned to Holland and settled in Amsterdam, where in 1609 he began publishing in addition to his activities as an engraver. In 1617, the atlas of the Netherlands "Germania inferior" appeared, bearing his name as the publisher and his full signature on several of the maps. In addition to various topographical folio pages, including those of Amsterdam (1618) and Nuremberg (1619), Van den Keere engraved a world map ("Nova totius terrarum orbis...") in 1621, which was printed by Jan Janzoon in Amsterdam. As an inventory of his business taken in 1623 shows, he ran a lively engraving business, but in the last 10 years of his life, he seemed to be more active in the commerce and business of engraving than as an engraver himself. Pieter van den Keere died in Gent in 1630.