Jan Claudius de Cock
Jan Claudius de Cock[1] (Brussels, baptized on 2 June 1667 – Antwerp, 1735)[2] was a Flemish painter, sculptor, print artist and writer.
He worked on decorations for the courtyard of the Breda Palace for William III, King of England, Ireland, and Scotland and stadtholder.
As a writer, he wrote a poem about the 1718 fire in the Jesuit Church in Antwerp and a book of instructions on the art of sculpture.
This renovation project of the castle was designed by Dutch architect Jacob (Jacobus) Roman and executed under the direction of Johannes de Wijs.
De Cock, accompanied by his brother-in-law Melchior Serlippens and 7 or 8 young assistants, worked on his commission from the beginning of 1693 until 1697.
He made mainly sculptures, including a statue of Mars, which stood on the tympanum of the monumental staircase against the west wing.
[11] He decorated an interior staircase with foliage and animal figures, created two fireplaces, a mirror frame and a statue of Mars.
[14] In his sketch regarding de Cock included in his biographies on Dutch and Flemish artists, the serial vilifier Jacob Campo Weyerman went so far as to compare him to a dwarf.
It is likely that his estate was insolvent as his daughter soon after his death travelled to The Hague to sell, with mixed feelings, some of his marble sculptures and models.
[6] De Cock was a prolific and versatile artist who worked on a wide range of church furniture such as altars, choir stalls, confessionals, pulpits and tombs, as well as secular items such as garden statues and vases, designs for cradles, clocks, floats, reliquaries and monuments.
[22] De Cock also made a set of four sculpture groups representing the four continents (Princeton University Art Museum).
Europe features a domed temple, papal crown, books, arms and armor, grains, flowers and a horse.
These symbolized Europe's religious, cultural and military achievements and its abundant resources, which in the European ideology of that time was deemed to reflect the Christian God's favor.
[24][25] An example of the work he did for the Princes of Orange in the Dutch Republic are the bas reliefs with the mythological scenes of Alpheius and Arethusa and Apollo en Daphne, both signed and dated 1707.
He made in 1713 Caryatids for the choir stalls of the former priory of Corsendonk in Oud-Turnhout, today partially displayed in the collegiate St. Peter's Church in Turnhout.
He was able to incorporate his medallions and caryatids into the back panel in a soberly harmonious manner, so that the balance between architecture and sculpture was restored.
Some of the elegant figures in the choir stall are executed in the late Baroque style, others in a restrained classical manner.
[29] De Cock was one of the artists who worked on the creation of a group of statues referred to as the Calvary on the outside of the St. Paul's Church in Antwerp.
Francisco Curtio Augustiniano Brugensi (...) and a portrait of the eighty-one-year-old artist biographer Cornelis de Bie, which were both engraved by Hendrik Frans Diamaer.
He made several prints of which only two are known, one an etching of the Martyrdom of Saint Quirin of Neuss and the other a woodcut representing Psyche in clair obscur.
[5] He had apparently learned his printmaking techniques from his study of the, which appeared in Dutch translation of Abraham Bosse's 1645 Traité des manières de graver en taille-douce (Treatise on Line Engraving) published in Amsterdam in 1662 as Tractaet in wat manieren men op root koper snijden ofte etzen zal (…).
