Hearing

Gonzales Coques, the Antwerp painter celebrated as the 'little Van Dyck' for his elegant small-scale portraits and genre scenes, contributed this panel depicting Hearing to a Five Senses series around 1650. The Five Senses was a perennially popular subject in Netherlandish art, offering painters the opportunity to embed moral reflection — senses as pathways to both pleasure and vice — within a domestic or courtly setting. Hearing was typically personified through musical performance: a figure playing an instrument or listening intently to music, the sense rendered visible through the physical act it enabled. Coques was particularly well suited to this theme, having built his reputation on intimate scenes of well-dressed figures making music, conversing, or displaying their cultivated taste in furnished interiors. His patrons were Antwerp's merchant and professional elite, and his works reflected their self-image as people of refinement. The panel is now in the Vlaamse Kunstcollectie, grouping it with related works from the same series.

Executed on panel with the meticulous finish characteristic of Coques's small-scale works. Figures are painted with attention to the textures of silk and velvet that signalled social status, and musical instruments receive careful still-life treatment. The composition is tightly organised around the central sonic act, with warm interior light creating intimate atmosphere. Coques's handling is smoother and more refined than Rubens, suited to cabinet-scale display.