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Lot Essay
This lively and detailed rendering of the Garden of Eden was executed by the Flemish artist Jan Breughel the Younger, the son of Jan Breughel the Elder, known as ‘Velvet Breughel’ or ‘Paradise Breughel’, and the grandson of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Jan the Younger painted several versions of this hugely successful subject throughout his career, following the example of his father and closely imitating his style. While certain motifs are drawn directly from his father’s work, Jan combined these to create a composition that is distinctively his own. This precise composition is known in five autograph versions, of which only two remain in private hands.
In contrast to earlier treatments of the subject, in which the figures of Adam and Eve took centre stage, in this painting they are just discernible in the middle distance, while the foreground is given over to a dynamic display of different species of animals and birds. These Paradise landscapes reflect the growing scientific interest in the natural world, which had evolved gradually during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, with publications such as Conrad Gesner’s Historia animalium (1551-8) and the Ornithologiæ by the Italian scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi (1599-1601), encouraging extensive and systematised descriptions of animals and birds. These sources grouped various species together according to their natural habitats and Breughel’s work, along with that of his father’s, following similar groupings of species, united in a single landscape setting.
As a court painter, Jan Breughel the Elder would have had access to the menageries of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella at Brussels. He recalled his first-hand study of the animals in that collection in a letter to Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Rome, describing how the species depicted in his Garland with the Virgin and Child (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado): ‘were done from life from the several of her Serene Highness’ specimens’ (A. van Suchtelen, in A. Woollett & A. van Suchtelen, Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 2006, p. 69). While relying on studies made by his father, which he would have had access to in the workshop, Jan Breughel the Younger would also have drawn from his own first-hand observations, as testified to by surviving studies in his hand, including Studies of a stag (Private collection; Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 2014, lot 140). The realism with which Breughel the Younger depicted his subjects also conveys an understanding of their movements and behaviour.
This lot is sold with a copy of a certificate by Dr. Klaus Ertz (25 May 2020), confirming the attribution after first-hand examination and dating the work to the mid-1630s.
In contrast to earlier treatments of the subject, in which the figures of Adam and Eve took centre stage, in this painting they are just discernible in the middle distance, while the foreground is given over to a dynamic display of different species of animals and birds. These Paradise landscapes reflect the growing scientific interest in the natural world, which had evolved gradually during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, with publications such as Conrad Gesner’s Historia animalium (1551-8) and the Ornithologiæ by the Italian scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi (1599-1601), encouraging extensive and systematised descriptions of animals and birds. These sources grouped various species together according to their natural habitats and Breughel’s work, along with that of his father’s, following similar groupings of species, united in a single landscape setting.
As a court painter, Jan Breughel the Elder would have had access to the menageries of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella at Brussels. He recalled his first-hand study of the animals in that collection in a letter to Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Rome, describing how the species depicted in his Garland with the Virgin and Child (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado): ‘were done from life from the several of her Serene Highness’ specimens’ (A. van Suchtelen, in A. Woollett & A. van Suchtelen, Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 2006, p. 69). While relying on studies made by his father, which he would have had access to in the workshop, Jan Breughel the Younger would also have drawn from his own first-hand observations, as testified to by surviving studies in his hand, including Studies of a stag (Private collection; Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 2014, lot 140). The realism with which Breughel the Younger depicted his subjects also conveys an understanding of their movements and behaviour.
This lot is sold with a copy of a certificate by Dr. Klaus Ertz (25 May 2020), confirming the attribution after first-hand examination and dating the work to the mid-1630s.