小楊·布呂赫爾

K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, vol. III, Lingen 2008–2010, pp. 1073-1074, cat. no. 514/1, reproduced.

This large scale and richly appointed Venus at the Forge of Vulcan exemplifies the Brueghel family’s fascination with exotic and luxurious objects and materials, and their delight in presenting them in abundance. Themes like this afforded them the opportunity to depict a vast range of objects of differing types, crowded into a single composition in order to create a dazzling and sometimes overwhelming visual effect. 

In this case, the putative subject is taken from classical mythology, and from Virgil’s Aeneid specifically.  The scene is set in the "underground cavern and galleries leading from [Mount] Etna" on the island of Sicily, the location of Vulcan's forge, as described in the Aeneid (8.370-453). Here, Vulcan-- the god of fire and metalworking-- presents his wife Venus with a shield which she will later give to her son Aeneas. Cupid, below, simultaneously reaches out to Venus with Aeneas' intricately adorned helmet. Vulcan’s workshop is shown littered with every conceivable type of armor that would have been known to Breughel himself—examples of luxurious Milanese and Northern armor, crossbows, hatchets, swords, helmets, plate for horses, and anachronistically (for ancient Sicily, at least) field cannon.  In order to show that the god had a more far reaching influence than just the Mediterranean world, Breughel has including more exotic armament; a full set of Japanese samurai armor is posed against the wall at far right, including a a Zunari Kabuto helmet, over which hangs two Ottoman quivers in red velvet or leather with gilt decoration.  In order to remind us that Vulcan was not purely concerned with the production of martial material, the tables to the right of the composition are laden with intricate and highly refined objects in silver and gold, including covered goblets, jewelry, clocks and scientific instruments, and an especially fine and elaborately wrought celestial globe. 

Through its overflowing detail, the mythological story here serves the greater goal of presenting the industry of metalwork, and Antwerp’s role as a mercantile hub in particular. Polished armor, cannons, and other weapons pile on top of each other, spilling over in all directions and allowing the artist to demonstrate his skill at surface and lighting effects, but also the city’s considerable international reach and wealth.  Breughel would have intended his patrons to understand this picture not only as a mythological scene, nor just as a dazzling tour-de-force of his own artistic abilities, but also as a statement of their own place at the hub of an global trading center.

This Venus at the Forge of Vulcan is among the finest examples by Jan Breughel the Younger in his endeavors at faithfully recreating a composition invented by his father. The picture follows Jan Brueghel the Elder’s version of the composition from 1623 (Private Collection, see Ertz op. cit., cat. no. 514, reproduced in color), a signed and dated panel of near identical dimensions to the present work. That the prototype for this panel is dated provides it a terminus ante quem, and thus may have been one of the first paintings Breughel the Younger executed following his return to Antwerp from Italy upon the death of his father in 1625.

Few pictures by Breughel the Younger reach the level of refinement of the present work such that they can be compared with versions by his father, but in this painting’s attention to detail, lush coloring, and accurate draftsmanship, it must certainly be considered one of his finest surviving achievements.  In almost every regard, this version accurately repeats the prototype, down to the minute rendering of the black and silver gilt armor stacked in the left foreground, stacking of still life elements in the right foreground, and intricate rug upon which Venus stands. While Ertz considers the staffage in the earlier version to have been executed by Hendrick van Balen, the figures in this work are clearly by a different hand, albeit a highly skilled one, and Ertz considers them to be a product of an unknown hand in the Breughel workshop.

Breughel the Younger’s return from a sojourn in Rome was prompted by the death of his father in (and three of his siblings) from a cholera epidemic that struck Antwerp early in 1625.  The ensuing years were ones of frenetic activity, given his new found responsibilities in the running of his father's large and highly successful workshop, fulfilling existing contracts and commitments and completing partly painted pictures. While the direct inspiration for this painting came from the prototype executed shortly before Breughel the Younger's inheritance of the head of the family workshop, the general compositional structure and iconographic language was already well in use in the Brueghel family at the turn of the seventeenth century. Brueghel the Elder introduced many of the elements found here in his Allegory of Fire (Ambrosiana, Milan), part of his Elements series for which he completed his first set in Milan circa 1605 for Cardinal Federico Borromeo, and which uses the story of Vulcan and Venus as the vehicle for the allegory. Brueghel the Elder's own inspiration for the basic compositional structure of a vaulted architectural setting for a Venus and Vulcan story likely came from a drawing by the Flemish born Venetian artist Paolo Fiammingo (see A. Wollett (ed.), Rubens & Brueghel: A Working Friendship, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles 2006, p. 143, fig. 78), which Brueghel may have known in print form. Jan Breughel the Younger evidently found success in this specific architectural background, as he incorporated it into yet another Allegory of Fire, executed as part of his own Elements series from circa 1636, again with the Vulcan and Venus story used for the allegory's personification (sold New York, Christie's, 27 January 2010, lot 10, for $2,210,500).