Jan Cossiers

[4] He received his first training from his father and then moved to the studio of the prominent portrait and history painter Cornelis de Vos.

[5] He travelled to Aix-en-Provence in France in 1623, where he stayed with and studied under the Dutch painter Abraham de Vries.

Here he met Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the famous humanist and close friend of Peter Paul Rubens.

This portrait is believed to show the three artist friends enjoying a smoke and a drink together during their residence in Aix-en Provence.

[9] He further assisted with Rubens' commission for decorating the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge of Philip IV of Spain near Madrid.

[10] Cossiers enjoyed the patronage of the governors of the Southern Netherlands such as Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria.

After the death of Rubens in 1640 he was recognized as one of the leading history painters in Flanders and he received many commissions for Counter-Reformation altarpieces.

[5] He was elected a number of times as a 'consultor' of the 'Sodaliteit der getrouwden', a fraternity for married men established by the Jesuit order in Antwerp.

There was a clear evolution in Cossiers' career, which was not unlike that of some of his Antwerp contemporaries such as Simon de Vos and Theodoor Rombouts.

He later became involved in the execution of religious and mythological compositions that were part of the large commissions of the Rubens workshop in the 1630s.

[6] An example of a work painted during this early period is the Fortune teller (Musée des beaux-arts, Valenciennes).

Examples are the mythological scenes he painted after designs by Rubens for the Torre de la Parada such as the Prometheus carrying fire, Narcissus and Jupiter and Lycaon (Prado Museum).

[13] During this period his work underwent the influence of the monumentality and palette of Rubens, whom he assisted on large commissions.

[12] His compositions in this late period emphasize the pathos of the figures through their exaggerated emotional expressions and lively gestures.

[16] Jan Cossiers moved in the circle of the famous Flemish genre painter Adriaen Brouwer who was known, amongst others, for his tronies, i.e. head or facial studies, which investigate varieties of expression.

[18] As was common in Antwerp's art world at the time, Cossiers collaborated with other specialist artists, for whom he painted the figures.

[19] He is known to have collaborated with the still life and animal painter Adriaen van Utrecht on a kitchen scene (dated 1639, private collection).