for tapestries. He first settled in Mechelen where he registered in the local Guild of Saint Luke on 11 November 1539. He lived in Mechelen in a house on the Bruul, in the city centre. He married Ida van Hasselt, a native of the city of Hasselt, then in the County of Loon in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. He later resided in Liège, the principal city in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. Liège was at that time an important artistic centre where important artists such as Lambert Lombard, Frans Floris and Willem Key were active. Lombard and Floris were Romanists, i.e. artists from the Low Countries who had travelled to Rome where they had assimilated the new Renaissance currents which they translated upon their return home into a break with the Netherlandish painting traditions. It is not entirely clear how long he stayed in Liège. It may be that for a while he travelled between Mechelen and Liège. The first children of Coxie, a son Raphael and a daughter Anna, may have been born in Liège although other sources place their births in Mechelen. Raphael followed in his father's footsteps and became a successful painter. Another son called Willem was born in Mechelen in 1545 or 1546. Willem also became a painter but no existing works by him are known. Upon his return to the Low Countries Coxie became a sought-after artist who gained many commissions. The first important one was the 1540 commission for The Holy Kinship (now in Stift Kremsmünster, Kremsmünster, Austria). This work, probably commissioned by the Antwerp Hosemakers Guild for their altar in the Antwerp Cathedral, is a monumental triptych showing at the centre the Virgin Mary with her mother Anna, Christ and John the Baptist. The scene is set in an overwhelming Renaissance architecture with many figures. With this work Coxie offered the general public in Flanders its first confrontation with the monumental, grand style of the High Renaissance. When Bernard van Orley died in 1541, while he was working on the designs for stained glass windows for the chapel of the Habsburg rulers in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, Coxie took over the commission and delivered four designs. Afterwards he was commissioned to design a cycle of stained glass for the St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent. It is believed that around this time he succeeded van Orley as the court