Background
He was born into a family of painters: his father was the Leiden-born painter January Wellens de Cock (1490–1527), and his younger brother Hieronymus Cock (1510–1570) became a famous engraver.
engraver painter draughtsperson
He was born into a family of painters: his father was the Leiden-born painter January Wellens de Cock (1490–1527), and his younger brother Hieronymus Cock (1510–1570) became a famous engraver.
Cock may have visited Italy. He took on pupils Willem van Santvoort, Jacob Grimmer and January Keynooghe. A portrait of Cock was included in the 1572 collection of portraits of early Netherlandish painters entitled Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae inferioris effigies with a poem about his landscapes by Dominicus Lampsonius.
Cock has been suggested as one of the likely draughtsmen of the Errara sketchbook in the collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium but this attribution is not generally accepted.