page_title: Jan Brueghel the Elder
section_title: Gallery paintings
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Brueghel the Elder / Work / Gallery paintings
caption_attribution_description: English: This painting of a private gallery or cabinet of a Flemish collector depicts a visit by Archdukes Albert and Isabella, the Habsburg governors of the Southern Netherlands. Isabella is seated, while her husband stands to her right and their unidentified host, behind. The walls are covered with paintings by Flemish artists. The sculpture displayed throughout is from various schools, but includes the bronze "Allegory of Architecture" by Giambologna, a Flemish sculptor who made his fortune in Florence. A painted "Allegory of Iconoclasm," depicting people who destroy art as animals, rests against a chair. Visitors examining paintings and objects on the tables draw the viewer's attention to these objects, as well as shells and a stuffed bird of paradise, from the Spice Islands. Pets include a monkey, kept out of mischief on a chain, and a dog, apparently with two heads (an alteration by the artist that has "bled" through). The globe-like object on the table at the left is one of Cornelis Drebbels' attempts at a perpetual-motion clock; the principles which ran it are now lost. Depictions of art collections were a specialty of Antwerp painters. Albert's and Isabella's role as rulers and patrons of the arts is celebrated here in an unprecedented way. The immense vase of flowers by Jan Brueghel, the greatest Flemish flower painter, is crowned by a large sunflower. This South American flower which could grow to be 14 feet tall and could turn toward the sun, was first seen by Europeans in the mid-1500s. It had been illustrated as a New World wonder in botanical treatises, but this is its earliest inclusion in a painting and its earliest use as a symbol of princely patronage. In turning to the sun (but here toward Albert and Isabella), it symbolizes the way that the arts grow and blossom in the light and warmth of princely patronage.
context_page_description: Jan Brueghel the Elder was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the eminent Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder. A close friend and frequent collaborator with Peter Paul Rubens, the two artists were the leading Flemish painters in the first three decades of the 17th century.
  Brueghel worked in many genres including history paintings, flower still lifes, allegorical and mythological scenes, landscapes and seascapes, hunting pieces, village scenes, battle scenes and scenes of hellfire and the underworld. He was an important innovator who invented new types of paintings such as flower garland paintings, paradise landscapes, and gallery paintings in the first quarter of the 17th century. He further created genre paintings that were imitations, pastiches and reworkings of his father's works, in particular his father's genre scenes and landscapes with peasants. Brueghel represented the type of the pictor doctus, the erudite painter whose works are informed by the religious motifs and aspirations of the Catholic Counter-Reformation as well as the scientific revolution with its interest in accurate description and classification.
context_section_description: Jan Brueghel the Elder and Frans Francken the Younger were the first artists to create paintings of art and curiosity collections in the 1620s. Gallery paintings depict large rooms in which many paintings and other precious items are displayed in elegant surroundings.  These rooms were often referred to as Kunstkammern ("art rooms") or Wunderkammern ("wonder rooms"). The earliest works in this genre depicted art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens.  Some gallery paintings include portraits of the owners or collectors of the art objects or artists at work.  The paintings are heavy with symbolism and allegory and are a reflection of the intellectual preoccupations of the age, including the cultivation of personal virtue and the importance of connoisseurship. The genre became immediately quite popular and was followed by other artists such as Jan Brueghel the Younger, Cornelis de Baellieur, Hans Jordaens, David Teniers the Younger, Gillis van Tilborch and Hieronymus Janssens.
  A famous example of a gallery painting by Jan Brueghel is The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet (now referred to as The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting the Collection of Pieter Roose) (c. 1621-1623, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore).  The work is believed to be a collaboration between Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hieronymus Francken II. This gallery painting represents the early phase of the genre of collector's cabinets.  During this early 'encyclopaedic' phase, the genre reflected the culture of curiosity of that time, when art works, scientific instruments, naturalia and artificialia were equally the object of study and admiration.  As a result, the cabinets depicted in these compositions are populated by persons who appear to be as interested in discussing scientific instruments as in admiring paintings.  Later the genre concentrated more on galleries solely containing works of art. The compositions depicted in The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet are predominantly allegories of iconoclasm and the victory of painting (art) over ignorance.  They are references to the iconoclasm of the Beeldenstorm that had raged in the Low Countries in the 16th century and the victory over the iconoclasts during the reign of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella who jointly ruled the Spanish Netherlands in the beginning of the 17th century. Jan Brueghel was responsible for the large vase of flowers, which is crowned by a large sunflower. This South American flower, which could grow very tall and would turn towards the sun, was first seen by Europeans in the mid-1500s. It had been illustrated as a New World wonder in botanical treatises, but Jan Brueghel was the first to include the flower in a painting and use it as a symbol of princely patronage in this composition.  By turning toward Albert and Isabella (taking the position of the sun), the sunflower symbolizes the way that the arts were able to grow and blossom in the light and warmth of princely patronage.
caption: The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting the Collection of Pieter Roose
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