Simon de Vos was a Flemish Baroque painter of genre and cabinet pictures. From 1615 until 1620, he studied with Cornelis de Vos (1603-76), to whom he is not related. In 1620 he joined Antwerp's Guild of St. Luke, and then he probably traveled to Rome where he came under the influence of the "low-life" genre paintings of the Bentvueghels and the bambocciate.

A Caravaggesque influence, by way of the German painter Johann Liss—active in Italy during the 1620s—is discernible in De Vos's paintings from this time on. In contrast to the earlier "low-life" paintings, works from the late 1620s until around 1640, which were made after returning to Antwerp, are mostly small "merry company" and courtly genre scenes reminiscent of contemporary Du...