(Antwerp 1601–1678)
The Spirit of God Hovering over the Waters(Genesis 1:1),
oil on copper, 72 x 93 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection since the 1970s

Exhibited:
Paris, Pinacothèque de Paris, La Dynastie Brueghel, 2013/2014, nos. 49–54

Klaus Ertz in his certificate (available in photocopy) writes: ‘In my book about Jan Brueghel the Younger published in 1984, I managed to prove that this painter’s quality is more superior than what has hitherto been suggested by the innumerable paintings on the art market, some of which are indeed of inferior quality. Without this potential of artistic excellence, which also manifests itself in the present series, his collaboration with such artists as Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrik van Balen, and Josse de Momper, which is exhaustively documented, would have been out of the question. For such cycles, Jan Brueghel the Younger commonly resorted to the services of a painter specialised in the depiction of nudes; yet the fragments of his surviving diary, which is full of evidence for such joint efforts, unfortunately do not reveal which painter Brueghel had chosen for the present ‘Paradise Cycle’.

From the middle of the century, collaborations are documented for the following artists: Pieter Wauters, Jan van de Perre, Frans Wauters von Lierre, David Teniers the Younger, and Abraham Diepenbeek. The latter two must be excluded for stylistic reasons. Given the current knowledge of research about Flemish art in the mid-seventeenth century, with the oeuvres of the painters in question still lying entirely in the dark, the question of who might have been the co-author in the present cycle of paintings cannot even be answered tentatively. Let alone the question of how many of Jan’s collaborators may be entirely unknown to us.

From the very outset, the Paradise landscapes played an important role in the work of Jan Brueghel the Younger. Time and again he referred to models by the hand of his father, Jan Brueghel the Elder, copying and modifying them. In the present series, however, the liberal brushwork, with strokes placed loosely and rapidly, reveals that the painter had meanwhile considerably detached himself from the meticulous and detailed painting style he had previously adopted from his father’s compositions. In some motifs, such as in the animals (the dog, the cockatoo and the monkey) or the landscape of the distant river valley, Jan II still presents himself as the keeper of his father’s legacy. But he also introduced new ideas for which there was no precedent he could refer to. The theme of the ‘Life of Adam’, for example, was not treated by Jan I, whereas Jan II dealt with it repeatedly.’

In order to corroborate the attribution of the present series to Jan Brueghel the Younger, Ertz compares it to the following incontestable works (four individual compositions and a Paradise series likewise consisting of six paintings):

(1) Paradise Landscape with the Fall of Man (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, c. 1650);
(2) Paradise Landscape with the Expulsion from Paradise (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, c. 1650);
(3) Adam Working in the Field (private collection, c. 1650);
(4) Adam Working in the Field (sale, Spik, Berlin, 2 May 1957, lot 84, c. 1650);
(5) The Life of Adam (series of six paintings, private collection, USA, c. 1650)

All of these comparative examples can be dated around 1650, so that the present paradise cycle can also be assigned to the mid-seventeenth century.

Ertz: ‘The palette appears considerably calmer than in the paintings executed shortly after the artist’s return from Italy. The artist’s conspicuous colours, characterised by the use of vigorous and pure local colours, has given way to a more tonal palette, which clearly reflects the influence of Dutch painting. A subdued overall tone of browns and blues prevails, with only occasional sparks of pure reds, yellows, and blues.’