Jan van den Hoecke

Jan van den Hoecke[1] (baptised on 4 August 1611 – 1651) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and designer of wall tapestries.

[5] Together with his father, Jan contributed to the decorations for the Joyous Entry of Cardinal-infant Ferdinand in Antwerp on 17 April 1635, the overall artistic design of which was under the direction of Rubens.

[2] Of these large-scale works some have been preserved such as the Triumphal Entrance of Cardinal Prince Ferdinand of Spain (Uffizi Gallery) and The Battle of Nördlingen, 1634 (Royal Collection).

It is known that the latter work, which celebrates the Cardinal-Infant's victory over a Swedish army at the Battle of Nördlingen of 1634 was painted by van den Hoecke after an oil sketch by Rubens.

As van der Hoecke was in Italy by this time, Jacob Jordaens carried out some re-touching of the canvas in 1636 before it was offered to Cardinal-Infant Ferdinand in 1637.

He also painted for Ferdinand's brother, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614–1662), including a Madonna and Child and a number of allegorical pieces.

[2][8] He was at the same time a court painter and the conservator of the art collection of the Archduke, which was reported to be one of the largest in Northern Europe and comprised about 1,400 paintings and other artworks.

Conversely, the increased knowledge of his unique style has also led to the attribution to other painters of works earlier given to van den Hoecke.

[12] The influence of Reni's idealized figure types as well as of Domenichino and Poussin (see the Virtue Overcoming Avarice of 1637) are visible in the allegorical paintings he produced in Vienna.

An example is the Amor vincit omnia (Kunsthistorisches Museum), in which the figure of Cupid was painted by van den Hoecke and the still life elements by Paul de Vos.

Ten preparatory oil sketches ("modelli") that van den Hoecke made for the series have survived (four in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), as have eight tapestries based on the designs for Day and Night and The Months.

[7][17] The cartoons of van Hoecke for the Allegory of Time series were innovative in that they dispensed with the traditional borders of the tapestries, which he replaced by elements of the picture such as piers, entablature and foreground step of the architecture as well as with sumptuous festoons of game, fowl, fish, flowers and fruit.