Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder
Habsburg Netherlands · Flemish Baroque painting
The story
In 1606 Jan Brueghel wrote to his patron in Milan, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, about a flower piece he was painting entirely from life. To get some of the rarer blooms right he had gone to Brussels, to the park of the Archdukes who ruled the southern Netherlands. A picture made that way took months, and buyers wanted more of them than one man could paint.
Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder is the label for pictures that left his Antwerp studio largely painted by assistants, often repeating his own compositions. The design goes back to Brueghel, while most of the brushwork belongs to helpers whose names are lost.
In Munich, the Alte Pinakothek hangs a large bouquet under this label. The museum traces it to a flower piece by Brueghel now in Vienna and points to weaker passages in the painting as the sign of a studio hand.
