Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Younger

(Antwerp 1601-1678)

An extensive floral still life with lilies, tulips, irises, forget-me-nots and other flowers in a bronze vase

Footnotes

Provenance
With Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris, 1996, where purchased by the present owner's family (as Andries Daniels)

It is not clear what prompted Jan Brueghel the Elder to pursue flower painting in the early years of the 17th Century, along with his contemporaries Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder in Middleburg and Roeland Savery in Prague. One of his most long-standing patrons, Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan, very likely purchased one of his earliest works, the copper painting dated 1606, now in the Ambrosiana, Milan (inv. no. 66); one of the earliest documented paintings of this type. Correspondence between the two reveals that his artistic ambition was to depict not just the beauty but also the rarity of nature, he notes how we went to Brussels specifically to find flowers that were unavailable in Antwerp and that the flower still life he was working on was notable 'as much for naturalness as for the beauty and rarity of various flowers, some are unknown and little seen in this area; for this, I have been to Brussels in order to depict some few flowers from nature that are not found in Antwerp'¹. On completion of the 1606 still life, Brueghel was definitely aware that he was embarking on a brand-new genre when he writes 'I certainly do not think I have ever made a similar painting'².

Brueghel's fascination and delight in the depiction of the natural world also underpinned the Kunst- und Wunderkammern so popular in the late 16th and 17th Centuries. In the richness and beauty depicted, they reflected the glory of God, whether in the natural world or of the intermediary, the artist. Flower still lifes went on to enjoy great popularity throughout Europe in the 17th Century and, having established it as a new genre, Brueghel's son and workshop went on to produce many works of this type to meet the high demand. One other such example of this type can be found in the An extensive bouquet of mixed spring and summer flowers in a wooden tub beside a squirrel offered in these rooms (4 July 2018, lot 62). The unusually large size of the present work is comparable to the most ambitious and monumental productions of Jan Brueghel the Younger's workshop, such as the Still life of flowers in a sculpted vase, on panel, 123.2 x 94 cm., which was offered at Christie's (10 December, 2012, lot 20).

Notes
¹ 'tanta per la naturalezza come anco della bellezza et rarita de vario fiori in questa parto alcuni inconita et non piu visto: per quella io son stata a Brussella per ritrare alcuni fiori del natural, che non si trove in Anversa'. See. G. Crivelli, Giovanni Brueghel pittor fiammingo, o Sue lettere e quadretti esistenti presso l'Ambrosiana, Milan, 1868, p. 63.
² 'credo per certo che io non habio mai fatto un quadro simili' (op. cit., p. 64)