Since all the depicted artists were dead at the time of publication, Lampsonius included a dedicatory poem that qualified the work as a whole as an act of mourning and readers of the book are asked to ‘be the companions’ of the late Hieronymous Cock and his predecessors in a funeral procession. The book includes a poem by Lampsonius dedicated to the memory of Hieronymus Cock and applauding the work of his widow. The portraits and texts present an honour roll of the earlier generations of Netherlandish artists. Their publication thus contributed to the formation of a canon of famous Netherlandish painters, which was well underway even before Karel van Mander published his biographies of early and contemporary Netherlandish artists in his Schilder-boeck of 1604. Lampsonius thus attempted to place Netherlandish art on the same level as Italian art, which he admired. He seems, however, to have resigned himself tacitly to the difference in rank between Italian and Netherlandish art. He writes in his poem on the painter Jan van Amstel that 'The Netherlanders are particularly praised as good painters of landscapes, the Italians of people or gods. No wonder: it stands to reason that the proverb says that the Italian has his brain in his head and the Netherlander in his diligent hand.'