Lille has recently been restored to his credit. In England he is chiefly known from his portraits, though a few allegorical pictures have been noted from time to time. It is difficult to ascribe with certainty to him all those portraits which bear his monogram with a date, while others are of even more doubtful authenticity. The earliest dated portrait by him is that of Queen Mary, painted in 1554, now in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House; also portraits of Antony Kempe, 1555 (Vertue, Add. MS. 23071); Henry Fitzalan, lord Maltravers, 1557, in the collection of the Duke of Norfolk; William, lord Howard of Effingham, formerly in the Tunstal collection (engraved by J. Ogborne), and the double portrait of Frances Brandon, duchess of Suffolk, and her second husband, Adrian Stokes, 1559 (engraved by Vertue), formerly in the Strawberry Hill Collection, and in 1868 in that of Mr. C. Wynne Finch. To 1562 belong the portraits of Margaret Audley, duchess of Norfolk, in the collection of Lord Braybrooke at Audley End, and Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, her husband, lately in the collection of the Earl of Westmorland; to 1563 the portrait of Henry Stuart, lord Darnley (head engraved by Vertue), and his infant brother Charles, of which one example is at Windsor Castle, and another on a larger scale at Holyrood; there was also at Drayton an anonymous portrait of a nobleman signed with the date 1563. If De Heere really painted these portraits in 1562–3, he must have paid a second visit to England, or perhaps to Scotland, although Van Mander says that he painted portraits from memory. If he left Ghent in 1567, prior to his banishment in 1568, he may have been the painter of the interesting picture of the family of Lord Cobham, now in the collection of the Marquis of Bath at Longleat. The portrait of Henry VIII in the master's lodge, Trinity College, Cambridge, copied from Holbein's mural painting at Whitehall, is apparently dated 1567, unless it should be read 1564. In 1569 he painted the curious allegorical picture of Queen Elizabeth, attended by Venus, Juno, and Minerva, now at Hampton Court. In 1570 he was commissioned by the lord high admiral, Edward, lord Clinton, to paint a gallery with figures representing the costumes and habits of all nations. The idea may have been taken from Andrew Borde's ‘Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge,’ the Englishman being almost naked as Borde describes him. In April 1865 the communal archives at Ghent acquired a volume of water-colour drawings, interspersed with verse, and entitled ‘Theatre de tous les peuples et Nations de la terre, avec leurs habits et ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes, diligemment depeints, au naturel, par Luc Dheere, peintre et sculpteur gantois.’ The contents of this volume exactly correspond to the paintings executed for Lord Clinton, the figure of the naked Englishman occurs, and there are other allusions and drawings relating to his stay in England. As one of the poems is dated 1580, the volume would seem to be a collection of studies made by De Heere, and added to from time to time. One of the figures represents the Greenlander, brought to England by Sir Martin Frobisher in 1576. Portraits by him are among the many attributed in this country to Holbein.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Blommaert's Levensschets van Lucas D'Heere; De Busscher's Recherches sur les peintres et sculpteurs de Gand au XVIme siècle; Walpole's Anecd. of Painting, ed. Dallaway and Wornum; Van Mander's Livre des Peintres, ed. Hymans, 1885; Michiels's Histoire de la Peinture Flamande; Moens's Registers of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars; Law's Cat. of the Pictures at Hampton Court; Catalogues of the National Portrait Exhibitions; information and assistance from George Scharf, C.B., F.S.A.]
DEICOLA or DEICOLUS, Saint (d. 625), was a native of Leinster and one of the twelve companions who, in imitation of the twelve apostles, attended St. Columbanus from Ireland first to East Anglia and then to France, where he arrived A.D. 589 or 590. On the foundation of the monastery of Luxeuil he appears to have continued with him as one of his monks until 610, when Columbanus, having been expelled from it through the intrigues of Brunehilde, grandmother of Theodoric, king of Burgundy, some of his monks accompanied him into exile. One of these was Deicola, but they had only proceeded two miles when it became evident that he was unequal to the journey, and he besought Columbanus to permit him to stay behind and retire to some solitude. His request was granted, and Deicola thus left alone, and forbidden by his master to return to Luxeuil, sought the depths of the forest. Here he met a swineherd, who was startled by the sudden appearance of a stranger of great stature (‘procerus’), dressed in foreign fashion and armed with a club (‘fustis’), the cambatta or curved-headed staff of the Irish monk. The swineherd advised him to settle in a place called Luthra, situated on the land of a large proprietor, and surrounded by swamps and forest. Settling there he discovered a little church dedicated to St. Martin, in which a priest officiated at certain times. Thither Deicola resorted for prayer in secret, especially at night, thus keeping up,
