Jan Brueghel the Elder
Flemish, 1568 - 1625
Flanders, 1568 - 1625
Jan Brueghel the Elder was born in Brussels in 1568. He studied watercolour with his grandmother, Mayken Verhulst, and oil painting with Peter Goetkindt. Between 1589/90 and 1596 Brueghel travelled in Italy, visiting Naples, Rome and Milan. In Milan he was received by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, who was to become a lifelong patron. Brueghel returned to Antwerp in 1596, becoming master of the guild of St. Luke in 1597 and dean in 1602. He visited Prague in 1604, gaining commissions from Emperor Rudolf II.
In 1608 Brueghel is recorded as being in Brussels as court painter to the Habsburg Regents of the Netherlands, Archduke Albrecht VII and the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. He kept this appointment until his death. Around 1613 Brueghel travelled to the northern Netherlands on official business with Peter Paul Rubens and Hendrik van Balen, artists with whom he often collaborated.
In 1618 the city magistrates commissioned the twelve major painters of Antwerp to produce a sample of their painterly abilities for the Archduke. Jan Brueghel oversaw a collaborative series of paintings, Allegory of the Five Senses, in which Rubens, Josse de Momper the Younger, Frans Snyders, Hendrick van Balen, Frans Francken the Younger, Sebastiaen Vrancx and Jan himself participated.
Admired throughout Europe, Brueghel's paintings are distinguished by a profusion of detail and painted with the delicacy of a miniature. The exquisite quality of his flowerpieces, and his fondness for Paradise landscapes, earned him the titles of ‘Flower’ and ‘ Paradise’ Brueghel. He died in the Antwerp cholera epidemic of 1625, which also claimed the lives of three of his children. Brueghel 's son Jan Breughel II (1601-1678) succeeded to his studio.
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Person TypeIndividual
Flemish, 1575 - 1632
