Jan Brueghel the Elder, Brussels 1568 - 1625 Antwerp, and Johann (Hans) Rottenhammer the Elder

Jan Brueghel the Elder

Brussels 1568 - 1625 Antwerp

and Johann (Hans) Rottenhammer the Elder

Munich 1564 - 1625 Augsburg

Attributed

"Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist"

Oil on copper

27 x 20 cm, with frame 57 x 50 cm



This masterly painting is a depiction of the Holy Family with Anna and Joachim, Mary's parents, with Mary herself, and Jesus as well as John the Baptist as children. The group is shown in pyramidal composition, culminating in the depiction of St Anne. She sits in the centre of the picture and looks down on Jesus with folded hands. The child is lying on a cloth between Mary and Joachim; the latter seems to be about to touch the bare sole of the child's foot, alluding to the human side of Jesus. With his left hand, Jesus also points to his grandfather and looks directly at the viewer from within the picture space. The child has laid his head down in the lap of his mother, who lovingly grasps her child’s hand with her right hand. In her left arm she holds the approaching John, who is holding a dove in his left hand, presumably an allusion to the forthcoming baptism in the Jordan river, at which the Holy Spirit descends as a dove. The scene is located at the threshold of a stable with rustic, rudimentary architecture, and a thatched roof in a bucolic natural setting. In the background, an idealised landscape of mountains and lakes with a distinctly luminous colouring is revealed.



A comparable work with the Holy Family has survived by Hans Rottenhammer the Elder, dated around 1593/95 (Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen. Alte Pinakothek Munich, inv. no. 1652), although the work shown here appears more moving and naturalistic. Rottenhammer the Elder was a renowned Mannerist painter of the early Baroque. Through his drawing studies in Rome, he met the important landscape painter Jan Brueghel the Elder. Working together, they created numerous small-format pictorial works on copper, with Rottenhammer painting the figures and Brueghel the Elder adding the landscape views. One of the paintings, for example, is Tranquillity of the Holy Family on the Flight to Egypt from 1595 in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis in The Hague (inv. no. 283). These particularly precious collectors' items already enjoyed great popularity around 1600.



This work can be seen in an established tradition of artistic collaboration. Rottenhammer's mannerist elongated figures with distinctly luminous colouring and exceptional plasticity in the folding of their robes would have been combined with Brueghel the Elder's landscape expression of high, pointed conical mountain formations and stunning cloud formations to create this masterful painting.