(Antwerp 1601–1678 and Antwerp 1607–1667)
The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and the Infant Saint John the Baptist in a landscape,
oil on copper, 31 x 42 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Germany;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 13 October 2010, lot 512;
Private European collection

Klaus Ertz in his certificate from 2009: “The condition of the painting can be described as good. The colours give a bright and brilliant impression, having been applied in a thick, impasto fashion. The thinly applied layers of glazes, particularly recognisable in the flowers and along the edges of the leaves, are well preserved.” Ertz refers to the following comparisons as examples of the collaboration between J. Brueghel II and F. Francken III:

1) Flowers and Fruit around a Medallion Enclosing the Encounter of Mary and Elizabeth (1630s, Spanish private collection) and
2) A Wreath of Flowers around a Medallion Featuring Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in Prayer (late 1630s, private collection)

Ertz continues: “The examination of the original revealed that the landscape was painted first and that the figures (by F. Francken III) were then added. The figures virtually ‘float on the landscape’. This becomes particularly obvious as neither a leaf nor a blossom or twig overlaps with the garments of the figures, as is the case in many pictures in which several artists collaborated. This means that the landscapist, who had left a ‘gap’, passed it on to the figure painter, who probably did not return it, but sold it himself.”

Little is known about Frans Francken III, who executed the figures in the present painting. From receipts we know that he was repeatedly paid for figural staffage that he had added to the compositions of his colleagues.