An Allegory of Peace

The present work relates to another picture of the same subject thought to have been executed in the 1640s in a private collection in Germany (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger 1601-1678, Freren, 1984, vol. I, no. 235, pp. 395-7). Although the actual meaning of the allegory remains enigmatic, other such pictures seem to have been prompted by the political events of around 1643 leading up to the eventual Peace of Münster in 1648. As Ertz observes, the elements of a fertile earth on the left are contrasted with the elements of fire on the right, in this instance objects of luxury and beauty. Putti beat coins and the sun god Apollo drives his chariot across the sky. There is only the briefest hint of war in the middleground with a mounted cavalry receding into the distance, indicating that the present picture was probably made after the Peace of Münster.