(Antwerp 1601–1678) and
Pieter van Avont
(Malines 1600–1652 Antwerp)
Allegory of Smell,
oil on copper, mounted on a stretcher, 56 x 72.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

The present painting comes with a certificate (in photocopy) issued by Klaus Ertz in June 2017.

Ertz writes: “The colours typical of Jan Brueghel the Younger are applied in a thick impasto, with colour values characteristic of the second quarter of the seventeenth century. In the first half of the seventeenth century, a phenomenon began to manifest itself in Flemish flower and landscape painting that occurred nowhere else with such frequency and intensity: several painters specialised in different genres collaborated on a single picture. Both Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger (father and son) were not really capable of painting large-sized mythological, Christian, or allegorical figures and therefore depended on the help of their colleagues. In this case it was Pieter van Avont, who was frequently engaged as a collaborator. In spite of having been painted by different hands, these compositions turned out amazingly homogeneous and enjoyed enormous popularity at the time.”

Ertz dates the present painting into the early 1640s.