thumb|220px|Gaspar de Crayer by [[Anthony van Dyck|van Dyck]]
Gaspar de Crayer or Jasper de Crayer (18 November 1584 – 27 January 1669) was a Flemish painter known for his many Counter-Reformation altarpieces and portraits. He was a court painter to the governors of the Southern Netherlands and worked in the principal cities of Flanders where he helped spread the Rubens style.
Life
Gaspar de Crayer was born in Antwerp as the son of Gaspard de Crayer the Elder, a decorative painter, illuminator and art dealer. His mother Christina van Abshoven or Apshoven descended from a family of painters who at the time enjoyed some fame, but whose work is barely known now. Rather than stay in Antwerp, he looked for opportunity in the capital Brussels. He is believed to have studied under Raphael Coxie, the court painter of the governors of the Spanish Netherlands Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Isabella Clara Eugenia. He became a master in the Brussels Guild of Saint Luke in 1607. He was a dean of the Guild from 1611 to 1616 and was a member of the Brussels City Council in 1626–1627. He remained in Brussels until 1664.
thumb|215px|Philip IV with court dwarf
He operated a large workshop which produced portraits of members of the leading classes in Brussels as well as a large number of altarpieces for churches in Flanders and abroad including Germany and Spain. He also received in 1647 a commission from Dutch architect Jacob van Campen to assist in the decoration of Huis ten Bosch, the palace of stadtholder Frederick Henry in The Hague. De Crayer also completed commissions for Spanish patrons, the largest of which was a commission for at least 17 images of saints, possibly destined for the Monastery of St Francis in Burgos. Another important foreign patron was the German Catholic ruler Maximilian Willibald of Waldburg-Wolfegg, for whom de Crayer executed several large altarpieces for the churches in the Palatinate between 1658 and 1666.