Willem Kerricx

[2] His father, Petrus or Peter, was a brewer who had married Willem's mother Catharina de Bolle in Dendermonde on 18 January 1648.

[5] He returned to Antwerp in 1678 and joined the same year the chamber of rhetoric de Olijftak as a 'liefhebber' (enthusiast or fan).

[5] He was a member of the 'sodaliteit der getrouwden', a fraternity for married men established by the Jesuit order.

[6] On 21 February 1693 his wife's play was performed by de Olijftak in the presence of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, on the occasion of his Joyous Entry as the new governor of the Spanish Netherlands into Antwerp on 18 February.

[5] The next year he was commissioned by the Guild to make a bust of the governor as a token of gratitude for the four new privileges which Maximilian II Emanuel had granted the Antwerp academy in 1693.

Among these works stand out the marble pillar throne dated 1688 in the St. Paul's Church, Antwerp which includes two marble reliefs telling the story of a woman who sold her soul to the devil but was saved through the force of the prayer of the rosary.

[11] He also made the funerary monuments for two abbots in the Saint Gertrude church in Leuven (partially destroyed at the end of World War Two).

This is demonstrated in his best known work, the bust of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp).

The work is qualitatively on the same level as the Italian and French court portraits of the late Baroque period.

They were the workshops of the families Quellinus, van den Eynde, Scheemaeckers, Willemsens and Verbrugghen with whom Kerricx also formed an informal partnership.