Lucas van Leyden (1494 – 8 August 1533), was a Dutch painter and printmaker in engraving and woodcut. Lucas van Leyden was among the first Dutch exponents of genre painting and was a very accomplished engraver.

Lucas was the son of the painter Huygh Jacobsz. He was born, died, and was mainly active in Leiden.

Karel van Mander characterises Lucas as a tireless artist, who as a child annoyed his mother by working long hours after nightfall, which she forbade not only for the cost of candlelight, but also because she felt that too much study was bad for his sensibilities. According to Van Mander, as a boy he only consorted with other young artists, such as painters, glass-etchers and goldsmiths, and was paid by the Heer van Lochorst (Johan van Lockhorst of Leiden, who died in 1510) a golden florin for each of his years at age 12 for a watercolour of St. Hubert.

In 1515, Lucas married Elisabeth van Boschhuysen, from a patrician Leiden family. The marriage remained childless. Lucas did have a daughter Marijtje, born in Leiden out of wedlock around 1512. This daughter Marijtje would later marry the painter Dammas Claesz de Hoij. In their offspring, the De Hoij family, one can find prominent artists throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

He learned basic techniques from his father and from Cornelis Engelbrechtsz, but his precocious originality was paramount. Where he learnt engraving is unknown, but he took advantage of the works of Marcantonio Raimondi, whose motifs are reworked in Lucas' engravings and paintings, and became highly skilled in that art at a very early age: the earliest known print by him (Mohammed and the Murdered Monk) dates from 1508, when he was perhaps only 14, yet reveals no trace of immaturity in inspiration or technique.

Seventeen paintings surely by Lucas survive, and a further twenty-seven are known from descriptions by Karel van Mander, from contemporary copies or from drawings of them made by Jan de Bisschop in the later 17th century. Max Friedländer described no clear pattern of stylistic development, in large part because Lucas' oeuvre was swelled and obscured by attributions since found unsustainable.

Four broad stages in his artistic development are characterised by Elise Lawton Smith as his early half-length figures (c 1506–1512), the development of his landscapes (c 1512–1520), the influence of Antwerp paintings (c 1521–25) and the late works (ca 1525–1531), where multiple figures are deployed against wooded landscapes, as in the Healing of blind man of Jericho.

Raimondi's studies of nudes inspired van Leyden in his later work, particularly his altarpieces, in which he is an early Dutch adopter of the Italian-style nude figure. Two further artistic influences were Albrecht Dürer and Jan Gossaert. Indeed, he was friends with both, and Dürer drew van Leyden's portrait when they met in 1521. Dürer's mastery of engraving and Gossaert's Romanist style both heavily influenced van Leyden's work.