Jan Breughel the Younger

An Allegory of War

Lot Closed

December 5, 02:29 PM GMT

Estimate

50,000 - 70,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

The Property of a Private Collector

Jan Breughel the Younger

Antwerp 1601 - 1678

An Allegory of War

signed lower right: i. Breughel

oil on copper

unframed: 77.7 x 98 cm.; 30 5/8 x 38 5/8 in.

framed: 99.1 x 119 cm.; 39 x 46 7/8 in.

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 21 June 1956, lot 19;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 8 May 2012, lot 13

K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger 1601-1678, Freren 1984, pp. 49-50 and 387-88, cat. no. 223.

This copper forms part of a group of similar subjects painted by Jan Brueghel the Younger during the 1640s. These include, for example, an Allegory of Power and Justice of 1647 in a private collection,¹and a signed but undated variant of the present composition, with differences in the figures and some of the foreground animals, sold London, Sotheby’s, 7 July 2005, lot 104. As Ertz has observed, Brueghel’s production of martial scenes of this type and date may well have been in anticipation of the impending end of the Eighty Years War in 1648.

¹ Ertz 1984, pp. 384-5, cat. no. 220, reproduced.