Cornelis de Vos

Among the portrait painters of Antwerp in the age of Rubens, Cornelis de Vos was the one you went to for your children. His portraits of small sitters, with their stiff little collars, a held toy, a solemn face, have a plain tenderness that never turns sugary, and they are the works for which he is still known.

De Vos worked in the same city, and often the same rooms, as the giants of Flemish Baroque. He was a regular collaborator of Peter Paul Rubens, the towering figure of Antwerp painting, and in 1637 helped him turn out mythological scenes for the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge of King Philip IV of Spain. His own sitters were mostly solid Antwerp merchants and their families rather than princes, and his manner stayed calmer and more down to earth than the grand style around him.

Painting ran in the family. His sister Margaretha married Frans Snyders, the celebrated painter of animals and hunts, and his younger brother Paul de Vos took up those same hunting subjects. Cornelis served a term as dean of Antwerp's painters' guild and went on working in the city until his death in 1651.