Circle of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Holy Family with the Infant Saint John

Circle of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

possibly by Hans Rottenhammer (1564-14 August 1625) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625)

Holy Family with Saint John

Oil on canvas, 149 x 109 cm

with frame 153 x 114 cm

Dated “1623”

The work, probably created in the widespread context of Rubens' flourishing workshop, could be based on iconographic styles introduced into Flanders in the early seventeenth century by the two famous artists Jan Bruegel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer.

Hans Rottenhammer served his apprenticeship with Hans Donauer in Munich. With the help of Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria, he left for Rome in 1589, where he worked in collaboration with Paul Brill and Jan Brueghel the Elder, who had a strong influence on him. He soon gained recognition for his small-format historical and mythological subjects on copper. He then went to Venice, where he studied Tintoretto at the Scuola di San Rocco and the works of Paolo Veronese. He was commissioned by Duke Ferdinand of Mantua to carry out important works. From 1596 to 1606 he was in Venice, where Adam Elsheimer worked in his studio. He returned to Germany in 1606 and settled in Augsburg, where he acquired citizenship and became a master in 1607. He worked in Bückeburg from 1609 to 1613, then returned to Augsburg, protected by Emperor Rudolf II, receiving important commissions for decorative themes and altarpieces.

The engravings of his paintings by the well-known Egidius Sadeleer and Lucas Kilian quickly made his compositions famous. In his work, Venetian compositional models are combined with elements of Dutch painting – technique and landscape description. The richness of detail, the precision of execution, the application to the enamel rendering of the pictorial layer, the devoted intimacy of the approach to the subject are all elements that made his production sought after.

Jan Brueghel the Elder, also called Velvet Brueghel for the seductiveness of his palette, was the second son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and brother of Pieter Brueghel the Younger. He spent his first years of apprenticeship with Goekindt, a painter from Antwerp, before leaving for Italy around 1590. We find him in Milan in 1595, where he had Cardinal Borromeo as a patron. In 1596 he returned to Antwerp, where he registered as a master. After a trip to Prague in 1604 and Nuremberg in 1606, he returned to Antwerp and was appointed official court painter by Archduke Albert and Infanta Isabella. One of the greatest landscape specialists of the XNUMXth century, he completely renewed the conception by creating a simple and lyrical genre, connecting the different planes with infinite shades in which the characteristic blue-greens of his palette dominate and animating his scenes with characters that were sometimes executed by Rubens.

The painting reveals a less constrained brushwork and style than that expressed in the small copper, probably made by Hans Rottenhammer in collaboration with Jan Brueghel the Elder, who met during their stay in Rome. Rather, it displays a freedom and liveliness typical of the painters of Rubens' circle. As already mentioned, the three workshops were the scene of numerous artistic exchanges. It is therefore plausible that a Flemish artist reinterpreted Brueghel's model, using a technique similar to that of the Rubensians, who were highly regarded in 17th-century Antwerp at the time.