The Holy Family with St. John as a boy, angels and a lamb,
oil on panel, 51.1 x 75.9 cm, framed

Provenance:
Jessie Ball Dupont Trust.

We are grateful to Dr Klaus Ertz, who, having examined the original, has confirmed this work to be an authentic collaboration between Uden, Avont and Jan Brueghel the Younger. A written certificate is available. This cabinet painting, executed in fine glazes circa 1640, was produced in friendly collaboration between the three excellent painters, who specialised in differing genres. Whereas Jan Brueghel II executed the landscape, the figural group is by Pieter van Avont. Brueghel, the eldest son of Jan Brueghel I, received his artistic training in the studio of his father and in Italy. He took over the running of his father’s workshop in 1625. As an important landscape painter, he often worked with Peter Paul Rubens, who painted the figural groups for many of his pictures. During this period, Jan Brueghel II began to depart from the miniaturist, perfect painterly style of his father in favour of a freer, coarser style. Nonetheless, he retained the characteristic elements upon which his fame is based today: the layers of paint laid down in glazes which produce a spatial depth even in the smallest of details; the jewel-like coloration and the great richness of detail. This painting is an excellent example of this mature style of painting by Jan Brueghel II, and these new elements from the 1630s are evident. Thus the brushwork, for instance, is extremely painterly in parts, even if it retains the detail inherited from the artist’s father. The son is renewing his father’s style here, matching it to the taste of the day and replacing the predominant Mannerism with a more realistic and simplified style of painting.