Luigi Primo

Louis Cousin, in Italy mainly known as Luigi Primo or Luigi Gentile (c. 1605–1667) was a Flemish painter of the Baroque period, who was active in Italy for a major part of his career. Working in a style, which combined his Flemish roots with the profound influence of Italian art, he was known for his portraits and altarpieces.

Life His birthplace was probably the village Breivelde near Ninove in present-day Belgium but it is also possible that he was born in Brussels. A birth before 1606 is also considered possible. He was apprenticed to Gillis Claeissins the younger in Brussels in 1617. He left the southern Netherlands while still young. According to the 17th-century biographer Joachim von Sandrart Cousin continued his studies in Paris.

He was in Rome as early as 1626. The first work in Rome that brought him some fame was a fresco on the side altar of the Santi Domenico e Sisto church in Rome. It depicts a miracle attributed to Dominic Guzman. Then he painted one of four oil paintings in the Saint Catherine chapel in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. This work increased his reputation and earned him new, well-paid commissions.

The seventeenth-century Italian biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri wrote that Cousin's passion for women induced him to neglect his work and squander all his money. He painted a number of paintings for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and made for the Austrian emperor some portraits of the emperor. He collaborated on a series of twenty copper panels that narrate the deeds of two Sicilian noble brothers of Spanish origin, Guillermo Ramón Moncada and Antonio Moncada. Of twelve scenes devoted to the former, Luigi Primo painted five, Willem van Herp six and Adam Frans van der Meulen one. Jan van Kessel the Elder, an artist specialised in still lifes with flowers, insects and animals, executed the decorative borders that frame the various episodes.

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