Follower of Pieter Brueghel the Younger

The composition derives from the famous painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.¹ The enduring and widespread popularity of the composition is attested to by the large number of versions painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and his workshop and following. Some one hundred and twenty seven versions are known of which Ertz lists forty-five as from the hand of Brueghel himself, with dated examples ranging from 1601 to 1626.²  A further fifty-one he considers doubtful, and the remaining thirty-one, including the present work, he considers copies. The huge volume of these small works, which measure on average 37 by 58 cm., indicate that most will have been workshop productions, although there are necessarily wide variations in quality, colour, medium and style. The present work is relatively unusual, for example, in that it was painted on canvas instead of the more common oak panel support. While its handling and construction is otherwise typical, recent technical analysis has shown that ultramarine was used in the present painting for the sky and some of the costumes, a rarer and more costly pigment than the smalt more normally used by the Brueghel workshop.

1. P. and F. Roberts-Jones, Pierre Bruegel l'Ancien, Paris 1997, p. 45, figs. 54-57.
2. K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen 2000, vol. II, pp. 605-630.