Hendrick van Balen - Diana and the Nymphs with Actaeon in the background

Lot description

HENDRICK VAN BALEN Antwerp c. 1573 - 1630 ATTRIBUTED TO JAN BRUEGHEL THE YOUNGER Antwerp c. 1601 - 1678 Diana and the Nymphs with Actaeon in the Background Oil on panel Dimensions 53.5 x 93.5 cm The reverse bears the Antwerp city hall mark of quality, as well as the mark "MV," which corresponds to the personal signature of the panel maker, Michiel Vriendt, one of Antwerp's most prestigious panel suppliers during the first half of the 17th century and a favorite of Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Younger, among others. Provenance: - Drury Lowe Collection, Locko Park, United Kingdom. - Sotheby's London, December 6, 1995, lot 156 (Old Master Paintings from the Drury Lowe Collection at Locko Park). - Private collection, Madrid. The composition depicts the mythological episode of Diana and Actaeon narrated in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In a forest clearing, the goddess Diana appears accompanied by her retinue of nymphs at the moment of bathing, while in the background the figure of the hunter Actaeon can be distinguished, whose intrusion into the sacred space will trigger his transformation into a stag and his subsequent death at the hands of his own dogs. The theme was addressed on several occasions in the Antwerp art scene at the beginning of the 17th century, especially in the context of collaborations between specialists in figure and landscape painting. Among the most celebrated are those by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, who developed a compositional formula in which Van Balen handled the mythological figures—with elegant anatomies and soft modeling—while Brueghel executed the landscapes, vegetation, and animals with his characteristic meticulousness. The present work faithfully reproduces a model established by these artists, the original of which is kept in the Gatchina Palace, near Saint Petersburg. According to art historian Fred G. Meijer, a specialist in Flemish painting, the painting should be considered a copy based on that composition by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen. The specialist also indicates that it could be a work produced within the Brueghel workshop or circle—possibly with the participation of Jan Brueghel the Younger—although it is also possible that it is the work of a skilled copyist active in Antwerp who had access to the original model. In any case, the quality of the support—a panel marked with the seal of the city of Antwerp and the mark of the panelist Michiel Vriendt—confirms its production within the Flemish context of the 17th century, where the repetition and dissemination of successful compositions was a common workshop practice. It should be noted that the art historian Klaus Ertz, in his monograph dedicated to Jan Brueghel the Younger (1984), documents variants related to this composition, including a version of the landscape without the figures (cat. no. 323), which confirms the widespread circulation of this model within Brueghel's workshop and his artistic circle.