(Antwerp 1601–1678) and (Mechelen 1600–1652 Antwerp)
The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist in a landscape with various flowers and putti,
oil on panel, 51 x 78 cm, framed

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the attribution of the present painting. His written certificate, dated January 2022, accompanies the present lot.

The present painting’s richly arranged landscape setting including the grotto-like fountain with seashells, several flowerpots and floral wreaths as well as a fig tree with a monkey stealing fruit is carefully rendered by Jan Brueghel the Younger, while the figures are by the hand of Pieter van Avont. Jan Brueghel II and Pieter van Avont collaborated frequently – van Avont often doing the figural staffage for Jan Brueghel’s landscapes; and the latter painting the landscape backgrounds for Pieter van Avont’s figural scenes. Examples of such collaborations are conserved in several significant collections, including amongst others Flora in a Garden in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. GG 1692), where several single motives of the present painting are also included.

After his father’s death in 1625, Jan Brueghel the Younger took over the paternal studio and continued to work in his father’s unmistakable manner until well into the 1630s. In their superb quality and craftsmanship, these paintings hardly differ from those by his father. It was not until the 1640s – and initially only rudimentarily – that he arrived at his own, personal style. Many of his compositions may be regarded as his own inventions. He can be distinguished from his father primarily by a slightly subdued palette. His brushwork appears to be altogether more painterly and vivacious.


A comparable collaboration by Brueghel and van Avont was sold in 2010 at Dorotheum (sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 21 April 2010, lot 59).