(Antwerp 1601–1678)
Diana the Huntress,
oil on copper, 49 x 67.4 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Germany

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Jan Brueghel II. A written certificate (July 2020) is available.

Ertz writes: ‘The present painting can be said to be in very good condition. In their chromatic values, the colours typical of Jan Brueghel the Younger are characteristic of this particular period, when the painter had already detached himself from his father’s example – not with regard to subject matter but as to the manner of painting, which by that time had stopped being as detailed and handled in such a meticulous and fragmented way […]. We recognize the recurring red, white, and black coloured dog near the right margin, which is known from the father’s Diana compositions. Although this painting was jointly executed by two painters – which is not astonishing for connoisseurs of Flemish seventeenth-century painting, as this was usual practice in Flanders at the time – it appears as if it were created by a single hand.

The wide subject of antique mythology in general and that of Diana in particular was of interest not only to Jan Brueghel the Younger, who treated it during his entire career until well into the 1650s. In addition to allegorical representations, this was a theme that preoccupied artists and their sophisticated clients to an extremely high degree.’

According to Ertz, the figure of Diana was executed by a follower of Hendrick van Balen.