Jan Brueghel the Elder

The Fall of Antwerp to Spanish forces in 1580 led to the mass exodus of artists up north to the newly established Dutch Republic. Following his return to Antwerp in 1596, Jan Brueghel quickly became established with steady patronage in the new regime—foreign dignitaries, ecclesiastic, as well as the educated local collectors like the humanist Nicolaas Cornelis Cheeus, who owned at least 25 of his works. A visit to Prague in summer 1604 prompted him to expand his repertoire, painting more variants, on different supports and different sizes. In 1606 he became court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Infanta Isabella, regents in the Southern Netherlands—an honor shared with Rubens. Among his most significant mature work is a series of five panels depicting the Five Senses (all 1617–18, Museo del Prado) in which Jan Brueghel designed the settings whereas Rubens focused on the figures. This series, and their two pendants on canvas, depicting the Allegory of Sight and Smell and the Allegory of Touch, Hearing and Taste (both ca. 1620, Museo del Prado), are thought to relate to the 1618 Allegory of Five Senses, a single collaborative work painted under the direction of Jan Brueghel by twelve major artists of Antwerp—including Rubens, Frans Francken the Younger, Frans Snyners, Hendrik van Balen, divided according to their own specialization—but destroyed by fire in 1713. Indeed, when John Ernest the Duke of Saxony visited Antwerp in 1614, his chronicler Johann Wilhelm Neumayer noted that Jan Brueghel and Rubens were the two most distinguished artists of the city.

Not much is known about Jan Brueghel’s workshop arrangements, but the operation is thought to be on a grand scale comparable to that of Rubens. The two artists were frequent collaborators, producing around two dozen works together over a period of 25 years, beginning with the Battle of the Amazons ca. 1598 (Sanssouci Picture Gallery, Potsdam). Jan Brueghel was in fact keen on joint ventures with other leading artists since his time in Milan. In Garland with the Virgin and Child and two Angels (ca. 1619, Museo del Prado, Madrid) for example, he supplanted floral garlands—a motif he invented—around the Madonna and child by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, the premier painter of Baroque altarpieces in Milan. He also collaborated for several years with Johann Rottenhammer, the Munich-born painter par excellence of intimate kunstkammer pictures, painting the landscapes as backdrop for Rottenhammer’s figures as seen in paintings such as Descent into Limbo (1597, Mauritshuis, The Hague). Jan Brueghel the Elder’s son, Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–1678), also became a landscape and floral still life painter, whereas his only documented pupil, Daniel Seghers (1590–1660), specialized in floral garland paintings.