Touch

This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In each of these paintings Gonzales Coques has used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense.Here Touch is depicted as a man with his sleeve rolled back letting blood from his arm, a procedure which was believed to help cure or prevent some medical conditions. Blood was probably associated with the sense of touch because, like feeling, it permeates the whole body. By contrast, the receptors for the other four senses are located only on the head.This may also be a real portrait. We don’t know who it is, but as three of the other paintings in the series are artists, he may be one too. It was probably designed as the central image of the five, since the sitter faces forwards; among the others two turn to the left, two to the right.