Hieronymus Janssens, called Den Danser Daniel Seghers Antwerp 1624 - 1693 Antwerp 1590 - 1661

This would appear to be Janssens' only known collaboration with Daniel Seghers. After training with the genre painter Christoffel van der Lamen since the age of thirteen, Janssens was admitted to the guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1644. His elegant and delicate style, which is so evident in the present picture, along with his predilection for painting courtly dancing scenes, soon earned him the nickname ‘Den Danser’. His services were often sought by the architectural painters Jacob Ferdinand Saeys, Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg and Jan Gherinx to provide the staffage for their palace scenes, but the present work is hitherto the only known collaboration with a painter of still lifes.

Daniel Seghers was fifty-four when Janssens was admitted to the guild, and was already established in his career as one of the leading still life painters in Antwerp, so the cartouche must be considered to be a relatively late work. Solely adhering to his preferred genre of flower pieces, Seghers often collaborated with various artists active in Antwerp, who would paint the devotional or allegorical images in the centre of the cartouche, most commonly with Erasmus Quellinus II, but also including Abraham Diepenbeeck, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, Cornelius Schut, Frans Francken II, Gonzales Coques, Simon de Vos, and Domenchino (while he was attending the Jesuit college in Rome).