Description

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The position of Gonzales Coques in seventeenth century Flemish painting is shown by his contemporary nickname of The little Van Dyck. Coques developed a smale scale portrait style influenced by Anthony van Dyck and successfully extended the aristocratic portrait tradition to the middle classes. He also succeeded in combining aristocratic flair with an ethical view of the world and personal icons in small paintings. In the second half of the seventeenth century there was a marked trend towards small pictures in the Netherlands. Coques' middle class individual portraits are the same size as those of his fellow painters but his middle class family portraits are about 25% smaller than the average contemporary group pictures. Collections of cabinet paintings were conversation pieces that showed private life through the medium of painting.