The Parable of the Prodigal Son

1630 · Private collection

religious

Cossiers painted this picture after his return from Rome to the north, when he seems initially to have made a speciality of genre scenes of this type, perhaps inspired by Caravaggesque low-life subjects he had seen in Italy or their northern counterparts.

About the Artist

Jan Cossiers

1600 – 1671

Flemish painter. His earliest works were Caravaggesque genre scenes and later specialized in histories and religious subjects. He studied under Cornelis de Vos in Antwerp before travelling to Aix-en-Provence and then to Rome by 1624. By 1626 he had returned to Aix and had contact with, among others, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the famous humanist, who recommended him to Rubens. By 1627 he had settled back in Antwerp, and in 1628 he entered Antwerp's guild of St. Luke. In 1630 he married for the first time; he married a second time in 1640. During the 1630s his painting was more strongly influenced by the monumentality and colouring of Peter Paul Rubens, with whom he also assisted on large projects. Among his late religious paintings is the large Passion of Christ (1655-56) in the Church of the Beguines, Mechelen.

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