Jan Brueghel the Elder

Jan Brueghel the Elder was born in 1568, the younger son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and grew up in the shadow of a Renaissance giant. By the early 1600s he had become court painter to the Archduke and Duchess Albert VII and Isabella, sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands, and a close friend and frequent collaborator with Peter Paul Rubens — together they led Flemish Baroque painting for three decades. He worked across an enormous range: history paintings, allegorical scenes, seascapes, battle scenes, village life, hellfire and the underworld. But his innovation lay in what he invented — flow…