Brussels 1568 – Antwerp 1625


Jan Brueghel the Elder, also known as Velvet Brueghel owing to his palette, was the second son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525 – 1569) and the brother of Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564 – 1638). He spent his first few years of apprenticeship with Peeter Goekindt (1539/1540 – 1583), a painter from Antwerp, before leaving for Italy around 1589. He arrived in Milan in 1595 where Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564 – 1631) served as his patron.

Upon his return to Antwerp in 1596, he registered as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke. After a trip to Prague in 1604, and to Nuremberg in 1606, he came back to Antwerp where he was appointed official court painter by Archduke Albert (1559 – 1621) and the Archduchess Isabella (1566 – 1633). The diverse subjects he painted are of the utmost precision and mastery. One of the great specialists of 17th-century landscape painting, he completely renewed the concept by creating a genre that was both simple and lyrical, combining the different planes through infinite nuances dominated by the characteristic blue-greens of his palette, and animating his scenes with figures that were sometimes executed by Rubens (1577 – 1640). Considered as the last great mannerist painter of landscape, this contemporary of Rubens and Hendrick van Balen (1573/1575 – 1632) reached the upper echelons of Antwerp society, with the most prominent figures frequenting his studio.