The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and the Lamb,
oil on panel, 47 x 36 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Klaus Ertz, who confirmed the present painting to be an autograph work by Jan Brueghel II after examining it in the original. A written certificate is available.

The Holy Family has settled under an apple tree in the right foreground. The Christ Child in the lap of the Virgin is draped only in a piece of cloth and turns towards the Infant Baptist, who entices the lamb with a tuft of grass to follow him to the family’s resting place. Towards the right, the view opens up into a wide valley that is closed by a mountain range in the distance.

This meticulously rendered cabinet piece, executed in delicate glazes, is the result of the congenial collaboration between two experts, each of whom stood out in his own genre, and thus a typical product of 17th-century Antwerp painting. While Brueghel executed the landscape, the group of figures is by the hand of Pieter van Avont. Brueghel, the eldest son of Jan Brueghel the Elder, was trained in the studio of his father and subsequently in Italy. In 1625, he took over his father’s workshop. As the most renowned landscapist, he frequently collaborated with such famous painters as Peter Paul Rubens, who time and again contributed the figures to the Brueghel’s compositions. The circle of artists with whom he worked together also included Pieter van Avont, who was listed in the Antwerp guild of painters from 1622 onwards.