Lot Essay
One of a group of pictures which Speth Holterhoff (S. Speth Holterhoff, Les Peintres Flamands de Cabinets d'Amateurs etc. 1957, pp. 122-3) pointed out derive from the Prado Allegory and Personification of Sight and Smell by Jan Brueghel I and Van Balen (see M. Diaz Padron, Museo del Prado, Escuela Flamenca, I, 122-3, pp. 61-2, no. 1403). Filipczak (see Z.Z. Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp 1550-1700, p. 71) records Müler Hofstede as having demonstrated that the female figure looking into a mirror held by a putto is Juno personifying Optics.
The group including the claimed prototype in Philadelphia (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger, 1984, pp. 348-9, no. 183) and the picture signed by Jan van Kessel and dated 1659 (see W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the Seventeenth century, 1969 ed. fig. 615) has not been fully studied.
In a forthcoming article in Apollo on Abraham Willemsens, Gregory Martin will agree that the whole group may well be the work of collaboration of several Antwerp artists: two of whom will be identified as Jan van Kessel (responsible for the metalwork and objects - other than pictures - on the floor) and as Abraham Willemsens (responsible for the pieces of sculpture, and in the case of the present lot, for Juno and the putto). It seems likely that a specialist was responsible for the execution of the pictures; another hand may have been responsible for the layout of the gallery. Jan van Kessel may have been responsible for the landscapes, which in the case of the present lot is not identifiable as Antwerp
The group including the claimed prototype in Philadelphia (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger, 1984, pp. 348-9, no. 183) and the picture signed by Jan van Kessel and dated 1659 (see W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the Seventeenth century, 1969 ed. fig. 615) has not been fully studied.
In a forthcoming article in Apollo on Abraham Willemsens, Gregory Martin will agree that the whole group may well be the work of collaboration of several Antwerp artists: two of whom will be identified as Jan van Kessel (responsible for the metalwork and objects - other than pictures - on the floor) and as Abraham Willemsens (responsible for the pieces of sculpture, and in the case of the present lot, for Juno and the putto). It seems likely that a specialist was responsible for the execution of the pictures; another hand may have been responsible for the layout of the gallery. Jan van Kessel may have been responsible for the landscapes, which in the case of the present lot is not identifiable as Antwerp