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拍品專文
This compositional type was developed as early as 1613 by Jan Brueghel the Elder, emerging at a moment when the talented Antwerp artist was preoccupied with a series of subjects which can loosely be described as 'Paradise Landscapes', each showing people and animals peacefully coexisting in an idyllic, verdant park or forest setting. The earliest dated manifestation of this thesis belongs to the painter’s time in Rome, where it has remained to this day (Galleria Doria Pamphilj , inv. no. 278, signed and dated 1594); it has as its official subject the Creation of Man, shown in the distant background, but this only as a pretext to show an uncanny assemblage of birds, animals and fishes, all treated with the artists trademark ‘Velvet’ touch. The finest example of the composition reflected in the present work is probably the painting on panel, 54.5 x 87 cm., signed and dated 1613, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, with other versions by the Elder Jan in London (Apsley House) and Budapest (Szépmuveszéti Muzeum). In preparing these and other related compositions, Brueghel evidently relied on preliminary drawings of animals and trees in certain established poses and interrelationships, which sometimes recur in varying combinations (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Lingen, 2008-2010, II, nos. 184-199). These drawings may have passed into the studio of his son, Jan Breughel the Younger, who continued the tradition with his own versions of the composition, possibly as early as 1625 (see the signed and indistinctly dated version on panel, 60 x 90 cm., sold Christie’s, New York, 27 January 2010, lot 27, $2,882,500).
Recent technical analysis has shown that, despite the amount of crude modern restoration, strengthening and other overpainting on the surface of this work, an original seventeenth-century paint layer exists underneath. Examination of cross-sections of the paint layer under polarising light microscopy and X-ray fluorescence has shown that the pigments used are consistent with seventeenth-century practice, and include lead-tin yellow, a pigment which went out of use in the early eighteenth-century. There appears to be a possibility that the painting was transferred onto the current canvas from a different support, perhaps an oak panel, the typical support for seventeenth-century paintings of the Antwerp school. We are grateful to Libby Sheldon and to Kathleen Froyen for their technical examination of the painting; a full report and X-ray fluorescence analysis are available for consultation.
Recent technical analysis has shown that, despite the amount of crude modern restoration, strengthening and other overpainting on the surface of this work, an original seventeenth-century paint layer exists underneath. Examination of cross-sections of the paint layer under polarising light microscopy and X-ray fluorescence has shown that the pigments used are consistent with seventeenth-century practice, and include lead-tin yellow, a pigment which went out of use in the early eighteenth-century. There appears to be a possibility that the painting was transferred onto the current canvas from a different support, perhaps an oak panel, the typical support for seventeenth-century paintings of the Antwerp school. We are grateful to Libby Sheldon and to Kathleen Froyen for their technical examination of the painting; a full report and X-ray fluorescence analysis are available for consultation.