Manner of Pieter van Avont (Mechelen, 1600 – Deurne, 1652), Holy Family with the Infant Saint John and a Lamb

Manner of Pieter van Avont (Mechelen, 1600 – Deurne, 1652)

Holy Family with St. John the Baptist and a little lamb

Oil on panel, 34 x 27 cm

With frame, 50 x 40 cm

Our painting takes up, in reverse, a successful composition by the Flemish artist Pieter van Avont of the seventeenth century, experimented by the painter for the first time in a painting currently in a private collection sold at a Lempertz auction held in Bonn in December 1978. The work, by a painter who, between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, faithfully takes up the dictates of the painting of the ideal master, presents a Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and a little lamb, the latter prefiguring the death and resurrection of Christ. Jesus receives from the little Saint John a bunch of grapes, an allegory of the Eucharist and of his blood shed to redeem the sins of humanity.

In the painting of the follower of Van Avont, many of the key features of the master's vast pictorial production are visible. We have no information about the training of Van Avont, born to Hans van Avont and Anna le Febure and baptized in Mechelen on 14 January 1600. It is clear, however, that he was accepted as a master of the Mechelen guild in 1620. Two years later, in 1622, the painter was registered with the guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp: this shows that the artist had settled in a larger centre with a fervent cultural life. The artist, particularly appreciated by his contemporaries, also received commissions from Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, as well as from various highly prestigious clients. He worked together with some of the most prominent figures in the artistic panorama of his time, first of all Jan Bruegel the Elder, with whose collaboration he executed a vast series of paintings depicting Madonnas or religious figures within rich floral garlands. Pieter van Avont is best known for his religious and mythological scenes and cabinet paintings. In most of his paintings, the characters from the sacred scriptures are depicted in a lush natural landscape, with bright colours and remarkable luminosity. The subject is reproduced in various versions by the painter: in this one, the intimate bond of familiarity that ties the characters together is clearly perceived. This version of the painting attracted the attention of the artist's contemporaries and descendants: in addition to the painter responsible for our beautiful painting, Van Avont's model also fascinated the German Hans Rottenhammer, who presented it in a copper currently part of a private German collection.