[2] Cornelis and his younger brothers Paul and Jan (or Hans) studied under the little-known painter David Remeeus (1559–1626).

[5] Cornelis de Vos married the landscape painter Jan Wildens's half-sister Susanna Cock on 27 May 1617.

The same year he petitioned the Antwerp city council for permission to frequent the Saint-Germain market in Paris as an art dealer.

[6] In 1620 de Vos was elected high dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in recognition of his status in the city.

Cornelis de Vos was one of the artists working on the decorations for the Joyous Entry into Antwerp of the new governor of the Habsburg Netherlands Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635.

One of the hewn-out images that crowned the triumphal arch on the Meir, above the Huidevettersstraat, has been preserved and is attributed to the studio of de Vos (Jupiter and Juno, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).

In the period 1636-1638 Rubens' workshop received a large commission to make mythological decorations for the hunting pavilion Torre de la Parada of the Spanish king Philip IV near Madrid.

His work is notable for a warm palette and refined rendering of fabrics and gleaming jewelry with an eye for detail.

[6][8] Important features of his personal style were the lucid plasticity of painted flesh and the bright tactility of highlights.

He was able to achieve a sensitive portrayal of the characters of his sitters and the varied textures of their clothes through the use of an even, bright light as well as soft chiaroscuro effects.

[6] While de Vos' portraits exhibit a new fluency of painting style and spontaneity in the depiction of children, this was combined with a simplicity free from rhetoric that harked back to the earlier Flemish masters.

[11] In the portrait of his two eldest children Magdalena and Jan-Baptist, de Vos portrays them not from a distance but brought forward close to the viewer's space.

[6] As de Vos' patrons were mainly from the Antwerp bourgeoisie rather than the aristocracy, he was less pressured to magnify his sitters through rhetorical gestures and courtly graces as is commonly seen in van Dyck's portraits.

He represents the relationships among the sitters through sensitive hand gestures often deployed in a complex counterpoint: giving, receiving, touching, reassuring.

In particular after circa 1635, de Vos, a successful art dealer, likely realized the growing demand for history paintings in the local and international market.

From that date onwards he realized history paintings of a greater diversity in subject matter while his portrait production declined.

[12] From 1624 onwards, Cornelis de Vos abandoned his thickly produced brush strokes for a lighter painting style and placed landscapes in the background.

These resemble the Caravaggio-influenced compositions of his contemporaries and pupils like Jan Cossiers, Simon de Vos and Theodoor Rombouts.

The composition is also known through an engraving made by Alexander Voet in the 1630s (Royal Collection), which clearly identifies Cornelis de Vos as the author of the original painting.

While Caravaggio's masterwork was later stolen by the Austrian masters of the Southern Netherlands, de Vos' works are still in the St. Paul's Church.

Between 1636 and 1638 he, along with his brother Paul and many other Antwerp artists, assisted Rubens in decorating the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge of Philip IV of Spain near Madrid.

In The triumph of Bacchus de Vos' brush stroke is less energetic and free than that displayed in the Rubens sketch.