Holy Family with a Garland of Flowers and Fruits

A monkey dressed as a fool holds an apple in this panel, and the museum reads that apple as original sin, the fruit of the Fall. Elsewhere in the picture are a lamb and a cross, the sacrifice by which Christ was believed to have redeemed humanity from that sin. The picture was meant for private devotion, and it invited whoever prayed before the Holy Family to think about the Fall and the Passion together. It was painted around 1620 to 1623 on an oak panel nearly a metre high. The museum gives it to Jan Brueghel working with Pieter van Avont, a figure painter from Mechelen, and puts a question mark after van Avont's name, so his share in the figures remains open. The panel was probably bought before 1725 for the electors' gallery in Munich, most likely by Max Emanuel, the Bavarian elector who had governed the Spanish Netherlands from Brussels from 1692.