Jacques Jonghelinck

Jacques Jonghelinck (Antwerp, 21 October 1530 - 1606) was a Flemish sculptor and medallist working in Brussels in the Mannerist style common to the Catholic courts of Western Europe.

He collaborated as sculptor and bronze-founder with the sculptor Joos Aerts in the gilt-bronze and black marble memorial of Charles the Bold (died 1477) in the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk ("Church of Our Lady") (Bruges), completed in 1563. Letters between de Granvelle, now in Madrid, and his secretary Morillon in Brussels show that Jonghelinck, now as medallist, made a mould for a small medal in the spring of 1566.

One of his masterworks, a full-length, over-lifesize bronze of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba – made in 1569 from the gunmetal of the 16 cannon captured at Jemmingen and erected in the citadel of Antwerp – was destroyed after the death of Alba on orders of King Philip II.

His bronze of Silenus astride a Cask, 1570, is the figure for a fountain in the gardens of the Aranjuez; it replaced Giambologna's Samson and a Philistine,[1] which had been given to Charles, Prince of Wales in 1623, on the ill-fated diplomatic mission over the "Spanish Match".

His brother, Niclaes Jonghelinck, was a major patron of Pieter Brueghel who owned 16 pictures of his by 1565, including many of his best known.