Jan Brueghel the Elder

This intriguing drawing may well be the only example that has so far emerged of a drawing in which Jan Brueghel the Elder collaborated with another artist, who added the figures to his landscape.  This was a practice that he frequently employed in his paintings, working in this way with artists such as Hans Rottenhammer, Sebastian Vrancx, and Hendrick de Clerck, and also, in the inverse, providing figures for landscapes painted by Joos de Momper, but collaborative drawings have not so far been identified.

The attribution to Jan Brueghel the Elder of the landscape portions of this drawing is confirmed by comparison with drawings from various stages of the artist's career.  The handling of the foliage is close to some of his best early works, such as the Landscape with the Stigmatisation of St. Francis, in the British Museum¹, or the superb Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, in Budapest², but the general delicacy of handling and the treatment of foreground details are both perhaps closer to somewhat later drawings such as the Village Street, in Darmstadt³, or the thoroughly pastoral, late drawing of a Farm on the Outskirts of a City with Trees (1620-23), in the Rijksmuseum.⁴  The delicate touches of blue wash and the lyrical sweep of the landscape are features seen in drawings from all stages in Jan Brueghel's career. 

In the Darmstadt drawing in particular, we see quite a number of figures, on a scale similar to those found in the present drawing, but drawn in a rather different, more precise manner.  The straightforward, narrative posing, somewhat simplistic facial features and broad flat, grey washes seen here are, though, much closer to the figure style of Sebastian Vrancx, as seen, for example, in his series of drawings illustrating the Aeneid.⁵  Moreover, the actual figure group with the man with a gun threatening a kneeling woman is almost identically repeated in a collaborative painting in Vienna, in which Brueghel painted the landscape and Vrancx the figures.⁶ 

1.  London, British Museum, inv. 1946,0713.147; L. Wood Ruby and T. Gerszi, Jan Brueghel, A Magnificent Draughtsman, exh. cat., Antwerp, Snyders&Rockox House, 2019-20, no. 9a
2.  Budapest, Szépművészeti Museum, inv. 1307; Wood Ruby and Gerzi, op. cit., no. 14
3.  Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, inv. HZ 134; Wood Ruby and Gerzi, op. cit., no. 23
4.  Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. 1897 A 3370; Wood Ruby and Gerzi, op. cit., no. 27
5.  L. Wood Ruby, 'Sebastiaen Vrancx as Illustrator of Virgil's Aeneid', Master Drawings 28 (1990), p. 54-73; Idem., 'Sebastiaen Vrancx's illustrations of Virgil's Aeneid: new additions', Master Drawings 51 (2013), p. 343-348
6.  Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625). Die Gemälde, Cologne 1979, p. 506, fig. 613, cat. 266