(Antwerp 1601–1678)
A wreath of flowers around a cartouche enclosing the Madonna and Child with angels,
oil on panel, 112 x 90 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Klaus Ertz for the attribution to Jan Brueghel II. The present painting comes with a certificate.

By rendering the meticulously finished wreath of flowers against a black backdrop, Jan Brueghel II sought to emphasise the brilliance of the colours. He reserved the interior of the wreath for a pictorial medallion for which one of his Antwerp colleagues painted a charming scene of the Christ Child, the Virgin Mary, and two accompanying angels in front of palace architecture, with a river landscape in the background. In Antwerp, the motif of the floral wreath enclosing the depiction of saints developed into a genre of its own under the influence of the rosary prayer introduced during the Counter-Reformation. This development favoured a fruitful collaboration among painters, who worked jointly upon a picture. Brueghel, who had taken over his father’s workshop in 1625, was considered one of the most important specialists for such wreaths of flowers. He was able to refer to a long tradition of artists working together, such as the collaboration between his father and Peter Paul Rubens for similar compositions. In his certificate, Dr. Ertz attributes the central medallion to the Flemish painter Otto van Veen (Leiden 1556–1629 Brussels), while the river landscape in the background can also be assigned to Jan Brueghel the Younger.

Ertz compares the present painting to the following joint products of Jan Brueghel II and Otto van Veen:
(1) The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John (sale, Phillips, London, 15 December 1998, lot 48, late 1620s);
(2) The Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine in a Landscape (private collection, late 1620s)
He therefore dates the present painting to the same period (late 1620s).