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Lot Essay
An autograph version of a picture on panel in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Ertz (op. cit.) suggests that the figures are by an unknown painter in the style of Hendrik van Balen and that this painting can be dated towards the end of the 1620s.
This effusive tribute to the life-giving power of spring almost seems to effervesce with the quantity of flowers blossoming out of the ground or spilling out of baskets and across the picture surface. The intricate network of stems, leaves and blooms is drawn and painted with a delicacy akin to fine niello inlay, recalling the craftsmanship of seventeenth-century jewellers. Following in the footsteps of his father, Jan Breughel the Elder, whose mastery of such delicate work earned him the sobriquet 'Velvet Breughel', Jan Breughel the Younger had a passion for allegorical subjects that gave him free range to explore the varied textural and visual qualities of the attributes that could be ascribed to them; The Five Senses, The Four Seasons and The Four Elements (see Christie's, New York, 27 January 2010, lot 10, $2,210,500) were all treated with an equal delight in the poetical interpretation and the material splendour man associates with these categories.
This effusive tribute to the life-giving power of spring almost seems to effervesce with the quantity of flowers blossoming out of the ground or spilling out of baskets and across the picture surface. The intricate network of stems, leaves and blooms is drawn and painted with a delicacy akin to fine niello inlay, recalling the craftsmanship of seventeenth-century jewellers. Following in the footsteps of his father, Jan Breughel the Elder, whose mastery of such delicate work earned him the sobriquet 'Velvet Breughel', Jan Breughel the Younger had a passion for allegorical subjects that gave him free range to explore the varied textural and visual qualities of the attributes that could be ascribed to them; The Five Senses, The Four Seasons and The Four Elements (see Christie's, New York, 27 January 2010, lot 10, $2,210,500) were all treated with an equal delight in the poetical interpretation and the material splendour man associates with these categories.