Abraham Janssens the Elder

G. Briganti, Rome;

From whom acquired by Julius Weitzner, London, 1964 (as Flemish School, circa 1600);

From whom acquired by Dr. and Mrs. John McLario, Esq., Milwaukee, 1967;

Thence by descent to the present collectors. 

J. Müller Hofstede, "Abraham Janssens. Zur Problematik des flämischen Caravaggismus," in Jahrburch der Berliner Museen 13 (1971), pp. 244-245 note 118, 257, 301, reproduced fig. 18.

Abraham Janssens the Elder painted this large Madonna and Child with Angels in Antwerp in about 1607, around the time he was appointed dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in that city. His painted oeuvre—which primarily comprised religious, mythological, and historical works—most often revealed the influence of antiquity as well as the work of Italian masters such as Michelangelo and Raphael, all of which he would have encountered on his Italian sojourn in Rome from about 1598 to about 1602. During these travels, Janssens would have also been aware of the contemporary developments in Italian art, witnessing firsthand the innovations of contemporary artists such as Caravaggio and the Carracci family of Bolognese painters. Indeed, for the present painting, Janssens draws inspiration from a composition by Ludovico Carracci known primarily by way of an engraving that would have been circulating in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries.¹ This is not the only instance in which Janssens responded to the Carracci in his works, for he took a print by Agostino Carracci as his point of reference for his Hercules Kicking Faunus out of Omfale's Bed (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, inv. no. KMSsps344), datable to the same year as the present work.

¹ See, for example, the engraving by Ludovico Carracci at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts (inv. no. G679).