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Lot Essay
This small, brilliantly finished copper is a characteristic example of the popular compositions produced by Jan Brueghel II in Antwerp. The painter adopts a slightly elevated viewpoint from the top of a gently sloping hill, allowing the eye to be carried down into the panoramic landscape that stretches out across the picture plane, the colors shifting from the earthy greens and browns of the foreground to the delicate blues of the forest and church in the far distance. A large windmill dominates the left foreground of the composition, as travelers make their way through the scene in carts, on horseback or on foot, carrying sacks of grain and milled flour.
The visual potential of the distant landscape, with its luminous aquamarine blues and opportunity for meticulous brushwork, shows the influence of the work of his father, Jan I, from whom the younger artist derived popular or successful motifs. Here, the basic composition of the landscape, with the windmill on the elevated land at left, derives from a painting by the artist's father, now in the Palazzo Spada in Rome, dated to 1607 (a version of which was sold in these Rooms, 26 January 2011, lot 23). The composition was preserved and circulated through drawings by Brueghel and his workshop, which attest to the popularity of the design (Private collection, Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2011, lot 268; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence), with the sweeping landscape, punctuated by windmills, clearly in demand from the Brueghel workshops. Alongside the Galleria Spada composition, Jan I also produced several more versions of the same scene, including two dated 1611 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; and Gemäldegalerie, Dresden) and a further painting dated to around the same moment (Sotheby's, 26 April 2007, lot 9). These latter works clearly served as the model for the present copper, with the staffage similarly used as the basis for its design, like the man in the foreground preparing his horses to be hitched to his laden cart.
We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs. A copy of his certificated dated 24 March 2023 is available upon request.
The visual potential of the distant landscape, with its luminous aquamarine blues and opportunity for meticulous brushwork, shows the influence of the work of his father, Jan I, from whom the younger artist derived popular or successful motifs. Here, the basic composition of the landscape, with the windmill on the elevated land at left, derives from a painting by the artist's father, now in the Palazzo Spada in Rome, dated to 1607 (a version of which was sold in these Rooms, 26 January 2011, lot 23). The composition was preserved and circulated through drawings by Brueghel and his workshop, which attest to the popularity of the design (Private collection, Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2011, lot 268; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence), with the sweeping landscape, punctuated by windmills, clearly in demand from the Brueghel workshops. Alongside the Galleria Spada composition, Jan I also produced several more versions of the same scene, including two dated 1611 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; and Gemäldegalerie, Dresden) and a further painting dated to around the same moment (Sotheby's, 26 April 2007, lot 9). These latter works clearly served as the model for the present copper, with the staffage similarly used as the basis for its design, like the man in the foreground preparing his horses to be hitched to his laden cart.
We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs. A copy of his certificated dated 24 March 2023 is available upon request.