Michiel Coxcie, ‘The Flemish Raphael’, and one of the most influential painters of his time, is the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum Leuven One effect of the Sack of Rome in 1527 by the mutinous troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was to empty the city of foreign artists. When the crisis passed and artistic life returned to normal, the vacuum was quickly filled by an influx of new arrivals – among them the 28-year-old Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592) from Mechelen. Under the patronage of the Flemish Cardinal Willem van Enckevoirt, Michele il Fiammingo, as he called himself, quickly rose up the artistic ranks. Other Flemish artists made the trip to Rome, but none became as dazzlingly fluent in the visual language of the High Renaissance. In the decade he s