Flemish painting and De Jonckheere Gallery's old master paintings
Bears the hands of Antwerp, the tower and the mark of the panel maker Lambert Staas, “LS”
Provenance: private collection
This brilliant painting acknowledges the talent and the marvellous...
read moreBears the hands of Antwerp, the tower and the mark of the panel maker Lambert Staas, “LS”
Provenance: private collection
This brilliant painting acknowledges the talent and the marvellous artistic co-operation of these two astonishing painters: Jan Brueghel the Younger and Frans Francken the Younger.
Here we have an example of a remarkably successful co-operation between two painters with doubtless complementary specialities, but nevertheless belonging to two different generations. Such an association between painters was common in Antwerp during the 1600s. The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) has a splendid “Allegory of the Four Elements”, the result of a collaboration between our two artists.
Painted by Jan Brueghel the Younger, the landscape charms us with its spirited touch, a delicate palette and the meticulous rendering of detail. We can but admire the ease with which the painter manages to transport us into a marvellous countryside, of an extreme delicacy, magnified by a sublime and vivid choice of colours.
As for Frans Francken the Younger, he imposes his style by painting figures in all their complexity, rendering with the brilliance we know to be his, the strength and delicacy, the muscular force and softness of flesh. The expressive characterisation of the figures, emphasised by this free and spirited stroke particular to his best works, is deployed with just as much joy and magnificently animates this composition.
Diana (Artemis to the Greeks), the daughter of Latona (or Leto) and Jupiter (Zeus), was also the twin sister of Apollo. A powerless witness to the sufferings of her mother, the goddess cultivated such a hate for marriage that she asked for and obtained from her father the right to remain an eternal virgin just like her sister Minerva (Athena). This is why the two daughters of Jupiter received the name of White Virgins from Apollo’s oracle.
The king of the gods himself armed her with a bow and arrow and crowned her the queen of the forests. He gave her a cortège of sixty nymphs called Oceania and twenty others called Asia, of whom she demanded inviolable chastity. Queen of the forests and of wild animals, Diana is often portrayed by the artists as hunting.
Painted by two eminent artists, this panel cannot possibly leave the viewer indifferent. The refinement of its technique, the charm of its subject, and the force of its colours immediately charm the viewer. The presence of the expressive figures, thanks to the style so characteristic of Frans Francken, combines with the particular grace of the green vegetation of Jan Brueghel, giving this painting a particularly rare strength. The integration of the two different styles that compose it is remarkably successful: balance and harmony are the key words in this painting.
1581 – Antwerp – 1642
He was the most productive and – quite rightly – the most renowned of the numerous painters belonging to the Francken dynasty. This prolific and varied painter worked in...
read more1581 – Antwerp – 1642
He was the most productive and – quite rightly – the most renowned of the numerous painters belonging to the Francken dynasty. This prolific and varied painter worked in turn with his father, his brother and his son; he quickly became the undisputed head of the family studio which produced countless paintings of religious or profane subjects, whose picturesque portrayal is pleasing to the eye. He held an important position in his home town and numerous documents bear witness to his contemporaries’ regard for him. All the inventories of Antwerp collections mention paintings by him; furthermore, accounts books from the company Forchoudt, a major exporter of Flemish works, constantly cites the name of the artist.
He was nominated “great master” of the Academy of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1605 and dean in 1614. The same year, he bought a fine house, called Saint Mark, situated in “Bloksweg”, close to the “Poids de Fer”. This house became one of the most productive art centres in Antwerp; Frans continued the collaboration he had begun with his brother Jerome in their father’s studio and, later, he worked with his son Frans III.
He collaborated on numerous occasions with most of the genre painters of his time, adding characters to the landscapes of Jan ‘Velvet’ Brueghel, Joos de Momper and Alexander Keirrinckx, or painting figures in the Church Interiors of Pieter Neefs the Elder. He is not thought to have travelled like many other artists to study foreign masters.
He broached a wide variety of genres: biblical, mythological, historical, allegorical. He also painted scenes of private cabinets, a fashion he launched which became a genre specific to Antwerp throughout the whole of the 17th century. The elegance of the presentation and the brilliance of his technique are what distinguish his style. A characteristic trait of his manner is his way of painting the eyes of his figures in the form of black dots in slender elongated faces.
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