Jacques Jonghelinck

Who was Jacques Jonghelinck?

Jacques Jonghelinck was a Flemish sculptor and medallist working in Brussels in the Mannerist style common to the Catholic courts of Western Europe.

He moved from Antwerp to set up a workshop in Brussels in 1562 and was appointed court sculptor the following year.

In Brussels he specialized in funeral monuments for an aristocratic clientele and was also a successful merchant, and financier. He belonged to the immediate entourage of the diplomat Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, president of the council of state from 1556 to 1564.

He collaborated as sculptor and bronze-founder with the sculptor Joos Aerts in the gilt-bronze and black marble memorial of Charles the Bold in the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, completed in 1563.

Letters between de Granvelle, now in Madrid, and his secretary Morillon in Brussels show that Jonghelinck, now as medallist, made a mould for a small medal in the spring of 1566. Successively he cast medals in lead, tin, copper, silver or gold of the type known as Geuzen medals.

One of his masterworks, a full-length, over-lifesize bronze of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba - made in 1569 from the gunmetal of the 16 cannon captured at Jemmingen and erected in the citadel of Antwerp - was destroyed after the death of Alba on orders of king Philip II. The statue - even in Italy and Madrid - was thought to be too pompous and to exhibit unnecessary cruelty. It is a coincidence that Jonghelinck at that moment already had returned to Antwerp, where he was "waardijn" of the mint.