The painter Jan Breugel the Elder died 400 years ago this week, on Jan 13, 1625, aged about 47. Son of Pieter Breugel, brother of Pieter Breugel the Younger, and father of, not surprisingly, Jan Breugel the Younger, painting was the family business and they were immensely successful.
Jan was a close friend and frequent collaborator with Peter Paul Rubens and together they were were the leading Flemish Baroque painters in the first three decades of the 17th century. Jan was court painter of the Archduke and Duchess Albrecht and Isabella, sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands.
Cardinal Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, became Brueghel’s lifelong friend and patron and, for him, he produced many of the landscape and flower paintings for which he became famous.
I was delighted to learn that he had three nicknames. They were, “Velvet” Brueghel, because of his mastery in rendering fabrics on canvas, “Flower” Brueghel, obviously because he was famous for painting flowers and other elements of nature, and “Paradise” Brueghel which recognises his invention of the genre of landscape painting depicting paradise.
This is an informative and delightful short video from George Gordon, Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings and Drawings department, to promote a sale of paintings of Jan Breughel the Elder in 2015. 400 years after his death I don’t think it has dated.
By coincidence in 2025, January’s Painting of the Month at London’s National Gallery is Jan Breugel the Elder’s The Adoration of the Kings, so go along and see it if you can.
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