Gonzales Coques
Estimates range between c. 8 December 1614, the date on which a Gonzala Coques was baptized in the Antwerp Church of St. George (possibly an elder sister although female 'a' endings of first names of boys did occur in 17th century Antwerp) and 1618, the date under the engraved portrait in biographer Cornelis de Bie's book Het Gulden Cabinet of 1661.
He married on 11 August 1643 with Catharina Ryckaert (died on 2 July 1674) who was the daughter of David Rijckaert II, his presumed master.
[3] Such overseas travel would also offer an explanation for the long lapse between the time on which Coques commenced his apprenticeship (1620) and the date on which he became a master in the Guild (1640).
[2] In 1671 he became court painter to Juan Dominico de Zuniga y Fonseca, the governor of the Southern Netherlands who resided in Brussels.
The registers of the Guild of Saint Luke record two apprentices: Cornelis van den Bosch (in 1643/44) and Lenardus-Franciscus Verdussen (in 1665/66), artists about whom nothing else is known.
[4] Gonzales Coques is primarily known as a painter of individual and family portraits, which he typically executed on a smaller scale than was common at the time.
Some of Coques' works can in fact be regarded as the transposition of van Dyck compositions to smaller scale cabinet pieces.
[3] In that role he replaced from the 1640s the other leading 17th century portrait painter to the bourgeoisie in Antwerp, Cornelis de Vos, who concentrated from that time onwards more on his history paintings.
The set in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp has the following portraits: Sight (Artus Quellinus the Elder), Hearing (Jan Philip van Thielen), Smell (Lucas Faydherbe), Touch (Pieter Meert) and Taste (possibly a self-portrait).
Robert van den Hoecke was a painter who also served as the 'Contrôleur des fortifications' in Flanders and the plan, baldric (belt hung over the shoulder) and sword refer to this office.
The earliest works in this genre depicted art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens.
Coques played a major role in the genre in the second half of the 17th century and is known to have supervised the execution of this type of composition which usually involved the collaboration of multiple artists.
The figures in the gallery painting are portrayed as forming part of an elite who possess privileged knowledge of art.
The genre of gallery paintings had by that time become a medium to accentuate the notion that the powers of discernment associated with connoisseurship are socially superior to or more desirable than other forms of knowing.
The presence of children in this type of composition has been explained by the popularity in the Netherlands during the 1660s and 70s of genre scenes showing domestic interiors and 'ordinary' people.
[3] When in 1649 Coques was commissioned with the decoration of the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bosch, the country house in The Hague of the stadholder's widow, Amalia von Solms, he organized for his fellow townsmen such as Pieter Thijs, Justus Danneels and Pieter de Witte II to execute the commission.
[12] Garland paintings were developed in Antwerp in the early 17th century as a special type of still life by the artists Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen at the request of the Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo.
[15] It was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally.
[12][15] Coques is believed to have collaborated with specialist still life painters Gerard Seghers, Jan Brueghel the Younger and Catarina Ykens (I) on garland paintings.
