page_title: Jan van den Hecke
section_title: Still lifes
hierarchical_section_title: Jan van den Hecke / Work / Still lifes
context_page_description: Jan van den Hecke or Jan van den Hecke the Elder was a Flemish Baroque painter, draughtsman, printmaker and engraver mainly known for his still lifes, landscapes and battle scenes. After training in Antwerp, he spent time in Rome where he had important patrons. After his return to Flanders he worked for a while in Brussels likely painting flower still lifes for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the Austrian governor of the Spanish Netherlands, before returning to work in Antwerp.
context_section_description: He was a gifted flower painter.  As in the work of other Antwerp painters of his generation such as Jan Brueghel the Younger and Philips de Marlier, some of the flower paintings of van den Hecke were dedicated to the presentation of a single variety of flowers: tulips and wallflowers. Some of his flower still lifes, such as the Flowers in a Vase with the Siege of Gravelingen (Kunsthistorisches Museum), include a view onto a landscape or a battle scene, two genres in which van den Hecke was skilled.
  Jan van den Hecke made a number of works in a distinctively Flemish genre, which is referred to as 'garland painting'.  Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in early 17th century Antwerp by Jan Brueghel the Elder at the instigation of the Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo. Other artists involved in the early development of the genre included Hendrick van Balen, Andries Danielsz., Peter Paul Rubens and Daniel Seghers. Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image or portrait. The genre was initially connected to the visual imagery of the Counter-Reformation movement. It was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally. Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image, portrait or other religious symbol (such as the host).
  Garland paintings were typically collaborations between a still life specialist and a figure painter.  As van den Hecke was a gifted figure painter he may have painted both the still life elements as the figures in some of his garland paintings.  This may have been the case in his Rosary Madonna in a Garland (circa 1671, Kroměříž Archdiocesan Museum, Kroměříž, Czech Republic). A collaboration with the figure painter Jan Lievens is the Portrait of a Young Man in Flower Garland (c. 1642–1644, Kunsthistorisches Museum).
  Van den Hecke also painted still lifes of game with dogs in the style of Jan Fyt and pronkstillevens with ostentatious objects, a genre invented in Antwerp. He was particularly skilled at painting gold, silver, crystal and porcelain.
caption: Shepherds and travellers by a triumphal arch in the Roman Campagna
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