Jan Brueghel the Younger

The attribution to Jan Brueghel the Younger has been endorsed by Dr. Klaus Ertz, following first-hand inspection, in a certificate dated 13 August 2003 (which accompanies this lot).  He dates the present work to the 1640s by associating it with a number of comparable dated works by the artist; for example an Allegory of Power and Justice, signed and dated 1647, in a private collection (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger, The Paintings, Freren 1984, pp. 384-5, cat. no. 220, reproduced).  A variant of the present painting was sold in Vienna, Dorotheum, 21-23 June 1956, lot 19 (reproduced in Ertz, op. cit., pp. 387-8, cat. no. 223). As Ertz has pointed out, the artist's production of martial scenes at around this time was almost certainly in response to the end of the Eighty Years' War.