1568 -1625 · Brussels, Italy and Antwerp

Precious flowers, river landscapes, countless animals and scenes of paradise make Jan Brueghel the Elder one of the most meticulous and inventive observers of Flemish painting.

Jan Brueghel the Elder was born in Brussels in 1568. Second son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he grew up in a family of artists and probably received his first lessons from his grandmother Mayken Verhulst. His trip to Italy in the early 1590s was decisive. In Rome then in Milan, where he met Cardinal Federico Borromeo, a future friend and patron, he associated the Flemish tradition of detail with broader horizons and southern light. Back in Antwerp, he became master of the guild of Saint-Luc in 1597 and developed an extraordinarily diverse production: bouquets, forest landscapes, lively roads, river scenes, allegories, paradises populated by animals and floral garlands surrounding sacred images. His nicknames Brueghel de Velours, Brueghel des Fleurs and Brueghel de Paradis speak of the finesse of his material as much as the extent of his subjects. In Forest Scene with Hunters, the Trees, the Path and the Small Figures organize a living depth. River scene and Road scene with travelers and cattle show how human activity fits without domination into a precisely observed natural world. From 1606, he worked as a court painter for Archdukes Albert and Isabelle, whose menagerie nourished his animal studies. He also practiced collaboration, an essential mode of creation in Antwerp: with Pierre Paul Rubens, his friend, he created nearly twenty paintings where landscape, flowers, animals and figures respond to each other. The Holy Family with a garland of flowers belongs to this universe of sumptuous devotion. Died during the cholera epidemic of 1625, Jan Brueghel left an influential workshop and a language where the visible world became a poetic encyclopedia. Died during the cholera epidemic of 1625, Jan Brueghel left an influential workshop and a language where the visible world became a poetic encyclopedia. The selection "Jan Brueghel the Elder" notably compares The Holy Family with a garland of flowers and Forest Scene with hunters. His reading favors light.

Brueghel looks at nature as a world without secondary details: flower, animal, traveler and horizon all participate in the same living order.