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Lot Essay
This hitherto unpublished picture is an excellent example of the collaboration between the Flemish painters Hendrik Van Balen and Jan Breughel the Younger. Van Balen had already worked extensively with Jan Breughel the Elder, and as such, the Younger had already met and brought various works to completion with him. Their partnership intensified, however, when the Jan the Elder died in the cholera epidemic in 1625 and Jan the Younger returned from his trip to Italy (1622-1625) to take over his father's studio. He completed several of his father's unfinished works, and maintained the practices and partnerships established by him, including that with Van Balen, who had been an executor of the Elder's estate. From 1626, Jan Brueghel the Younger's journal lists numerous compositions in which both painters participated. Van Balen was instrumental in the Younger establishing himself in his father's workshop in Antwerp so rapidly, and their prosperous collaboration only ended when Van Balen died in 1632.
The present picture focuses less on the story in which Venus and Vulcan take part, than on the gods themselves, emphasized by their proximity to the viewer. Van Balen's highly-finished figures are testament to the Italian influence on his work, perhaps because he was trained by one of Antwerp's Italianate painters, or because of the time he spent in Italy between 1595 and 1600. The pair is typical of Van Balen's treatment of mythological subjects, in which attractive nudes inhabit paradisiacal settings, while the receding arcade in the present picture is a distinctive motif of both Jan the Elder and the Younger's work. The sculptural quality of the figures points to the sort of Classical sources which Van Balen was inevitably inspired by. It is also interesting to compare the pose of Vulcan in the present painting with the almost identical one of a goddess in a picture on copper of Venus and Mars, painted entirely by Van Balen (Schloss Rjec, South Moravia; B. Werche, Hendrick Van Balen (1575-1632): Ein Antwerpener Kabinettbildmaler der Rubenszeit, Turnhout, 2004, p. 174, no. A.99, illustrated).
Other versions of the subject produced by Jan the Younger and Van Balen include the painting sold at Christie's, London, on 23 June 1967, lot 116 (2800 gns.), in which the right-hand section of the picture derives from an original by Jan the Elder and Van Balen. Jan the Elder and Hendrik Van Balen's collaborative rendering of this theme developed from their depictions of the Element of Fire, personified by Vulcan, in a series of The Four Elements (such as that in the Galleria Doria Pamphilij, c. 1611; K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625), Cologne, 1979, nos. 248-251). The present picture exemplifies the way in which the Jan Breughel II perpetuated his father's legacy.
The present picture focuses less on the story in which Venus and Vulcan take part, than on the gods themselves, emphasized by their proximity to the viewer. Van Balen's highly-finished figures are testament to the Italian influence on his work, perhaps because he was trained by one of Antwerp's Italianate painters, or because of the time he spent in Italy between 1595 and 1600. The pair is typical of Van Balen's treatment of mythological subjects, in which attractive nudes inhabit paradisiacal settings, while the receding arcade in the present picture is a distinctive motif of both Jan the Elder and the Younger's work. The sculptural quality of the figures points to the sort of Classical sources which Van Balen was inevitably inspired by. It is also interesting to compare the pose of Vulcan in the present painting with the almost identical one of a goddess in a picture on copper of Venus and Mars, painted entirely by Van Balen (Schloss Rjec, South Moravia; B. Werche, Hendrick Van Balen (1575-1632): Ein Antwerpener Kabinettbildmaler der Rubenszeit, Turnhout, 2004, p. 174, no. A.99, illustrated).
Other versions of the subject produced by Jan the Younger and Van Balen include the painting sold at Christie's, London, on 23 June 1967, lot 116 (2800 gns.), in which the right-hand section of the picture derives from an original by Jan the Elder and Van Balen. Jan the Elder and Hendrik Van Balen's collaborative rendering of this theme developed from their depictions of the Element of Fire, personified by Vulcan, in a series of The Four Elements (such as that in the Galleria Doria Pamphilij, c. 1611; K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625), Cologne, 1979, nos. 248-251). The present picture exemplifies the way in which the Jan Breughel II perpetuated his father's legacy.