Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder

Baron Coppée, Brussels, by 1979;

Thence by descent to the present owner.

Tokyo, Fuji Art Museum, The Seventeenth Century. The Golden Age of Flemish Painting, 9 April – 26 June 1988, no. 9 (as Jan Brueghel the Elder).

K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere 1568–1625. Die Gemälde, Cologne 1979, p. 566, under no. 50 (as a later copy);

M. Wilmotte, in The Seventeenth Century. The Golden Age of Flemish Painting, exh. cat., Tokyo 1988, n. p., no. 9, reproduced in colour (as Jan Brueghel the Elder);

K. Ertz and C. Nietze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere 1568–1625. Kritischer Katalog der Memälde, Lingen 2008–10, vol. II, p. 507, under no. 228 (as a later copy).

This composition is based on Jan Brueghel the Elder's painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.¹

The painting’s copper support bears the coppersmith’s mark of Peeter Stas, indicating the work likely dates from the second decade of the 17th century. Stas supplied a number of his expensive copper plates to the Brueghel family workshop, and the mark on the reverse of this plate dates from after 1608.

¹ Inv. no. ГЭ-3090; oil on copper; 26.5 x 35.2 cm.; https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/01.+paintings/48340