Michiel Coxcie

Michiel Coxie, Coxie also spelled van Coxcie or de Coxien, Latinised name Coxius (1499 – 3 March 1592), was a Flemish painter who studied under Bernard van Orley, who probably induced him to visit the Italian peninsula.

Coxie was born in 1499 in Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant. He married to Ida van Hasselt, they had children amongst them Raphael Coxie (1540 – 1616). Lots of his descendants played an important part in the local history of Mechelen.

Michiel Coxie studied in his early years in Rome (1532), where he painted the chapel of Cardinal Enckenvoirt in the church of Santa Maria dell'Anima; and Giorgio Vasari, who knew him, says with truth that he fairly acquired the manner of an Italian. But Coxie's principal occupation was designing for engravers; and the fable of Psyche in thirty-two sheets by Agostino Veneziano and the 'Master of the Die' are favorable specimens of his skill. He belonged to the inner circle of Michelangelo and not only learned the style of the renaissance master, he also studied the philosophy and art theory of the antiquity and Roman renaissance.

Returning to the Netherlands, Coxie greatly extended his practice in this branch of art. But his productions were till lately concealed under an interlaced monogram M.C.O.K.X.I.N. In 1539, Coxie returned to Mechelen, where he matriculated and painted the wings of an altarpiece for the chapel of the guild of St Luke. The centre of this altar-piece, by Jan Mabuse, represents Saint Luke the Evangelist, patron of painters, portraying the Virgin; the side pieces contain the Martyrdom of Saint Vitus and the Vision of St John the Evangelist in Patmos.

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