Simon de Vos

He started his career making small-format cabinet pictures of genre scenes, in particular of Caravaggesque merry companies.

Later he switched to history painting, working on larger formats in a Flemish Baroque style which was influenced by Rubens and van Dyck.

[5] De Vos's first works were cabinet pictures of genre scenes, including various merry companies and group portraits.

His style in this period is close to that of the German painter Johann Liss—active in Italy during the 1620s—(particularly in the Caravaggesque treatment of the merry company scenes) and Frans Francken the Younger.

The persons represented are assumed to be Simon de Vos himself (in the middle), flanked on the left by Jan Cossiers and on the right by Johan Geerlof.

Typical for his early work, Simon de Vos painted the faces in this composition with thick features and eyes set wide apart.

The inspiration for the picture may have been the early works of Caravaggio himself, which Simon de Vos may have seen if he visited Rome.

[4] His works from the late 1620s until around 1640, which were made after returning to Antwerp, are mostly small "merry company" and courtly genre scenes reminiscent of contemporary Dutch painters Dirck Hals and Pieter Codde.

[6][7] Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in Antwerp by Jan Brueghel the Elder in collaboration with the Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo at the beginning of the 17th century.

[8] 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.