Frans I 'the Elder' Francken was born in Herentals in 1542. His father, Nicolaas Francken, was an obscure painter whose oeuvre remains unknown, but can be seen as the founding father of one of the most important dynasties of artists in the Southern Netherlands. Both Frans and his siblings Ambrosius and Hieronymus - who were to become painters as well - were first taught by their father. Karel van Mander mentions in his Schilder-boeck that later on Frans was a pupil of the leading Antwerp Romanist painter Frans Floris. He became a member of the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1567, and served several times as its dean. Frans Francken married Elisabeth Mertens; the couple had many children, of whom at the time of his death in 1616 six were still alive: Thomas, Frans ('the Younger'), Hieronymus, Ambrosius, Magdalena and Elisabeth. The four sons all became painters and would receive their initial training from their father, who also taught several other pupils, such as Gortzius Geldorp.

 

Much like his teacher Frans Floris, Frans Francken was one of the principal painters in Antwerp during the initial decades of the Counter-Reformation, and thus worked on many altar pieces which were commissioned to replace the ones that had been destroyed by the iconoclasm of the Calvinists. For these projects he regularly collaborated with his brothers; such is the case, for instance, in an Adoration of the Magi triptych (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and London, Brompton Oratory) which bears his monogram as well as that of his brother Hieronymus (as well as both brothers' portraits in profile, which they cheekily included in the wings of the tryptich).