 While she is recognized as an exceptionally skilled artist, little is known about her works or life as there are few surviving attributable sources of information.Mayken Verhulst was born in Mechelen in 1518.She was the second wife of the painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and the mother-in-law of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and, according to Karel van Mander, the first teacher of her grandsons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder.