Abraham Brueghel Antwerp 1631 - 1697 Naples

Though born in Antwerp, Abraham Brueghel was in Rome by 1659 and subsequently spent the rest of his life in Italy. He specialised in painting still lifes, in which other leading Roman painters contributed the figures: Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Giacinto Brandi, Guillaume Courtois, Bernard Keilhau and Luca Giordano were amongst those who worked with him. This painting was probably executed during Brueghel's late Roman period (1669-1675), as the inscription suggests, and it may be compared to two works by Brueghel, in which the figures are by a different hand; one in the Statens Konsmuseer, Stockholm and the other, signed and dated 1669, in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (both reproduced in F. Zeri, La natura morta in Italia, vol. II, Milan 1989, p. 791, figs. 928 and 929). Between 1671 and 1674 Brueghel lived in via Ripetta with his family and during the same period he is recorded as a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. The figure of the girl in the present painting is by another hand, most likely that of Guillaume Courtois, called il Bergognone (St. Hippolyte, Franche-Comté 1628-1679 Rome), with whom Abraham Brueghel collaborated often.