Simon de Vos

Simon de Vos (Antwerp, 20 October 1603–15 October 1676, Antwerp) was a Flemish Baroque painter of genre and cabinet pictures.

De Vos studied with Cornelis de Vos (1603-76), to whom he is not related, from 1615 until 1620. Christine van Mulders, "Vos, Simon de," "Grove Art Online", Oxford University Press, [accessed November 4, 2007] .] In 1620 he joined Antwerp's guild of St. Luke, and then he probably travelled to Rome where he came under the influence of the "low-life" genre paintings of the Bentvueghels and the "bambocciate". A Caravaggesque influence, by way of the German painter Johann Liss—active in Italy during the 1620s—is discernible in De Vos's paintings from this time on. Hans Vlieghe, "Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700", New Haven: Yale University Press (1998): 152. ISBN 0-3000-7038-1] In contrast to the earlier "low-life" paintings, works from the late 1620s until around 1640, which were made after returning to Antwerp, are mostly small "merry company" and courtly genre scenes reminiscent of contemporary Dutch painters Dirck Hals and Pieter Codde. After 1640, De Vos turned away from genre scenes altogether and painted mostly small cabinet paintings of history subjects, influenced stylistically at first by Peter Paul Rubens and then increasingly by Anthony van Dyck. Examples include "The Beheading of St. Paul" (1648) in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

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