Biography

Flemish master joiner and architect. He worked as a joiner on the monumental oak choir-stalls (1663) for the abbey of Groenendaal near Brussels. When the monastery was dissolved in 1783, the stalls were transferred to Notre-Dame in Vilvoorde. They are the earliest ones in the southern Netherlands that were executed in a mature Baroque style, employing life-sized figures for the first time, here in the form of angels carrying instruments of the Passion, placed against a high wainscot with twisted columns.

Cortvriendt carried out only one project as an architect; the small but notable Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Goede Bijstandkerk (Notre-Dame de Bon Secours) in Brussels.