Jan van Balen

Jan van Balen (21 July 1611 in Antwerp – 14 March 1654) was a Flemish painter known for his Baroque paintings of history and allegorical subjects. He also painted landscapes and genre scenes. His father was a prominent painter in Antwerp and played an important role in the renewal of Flemish painting in the early 17th century. He was also one of the teachers of Anthony van Dyck.

Jan van Balen had two brothers, Gaspard (born in 1615) and Hendrik (born in 1620) who were both painters. Jan was the teacher of his two younger brothers. His sister Maria married the painter Theodoor van Thulden.

Jan van Balen left on 8 September 1639 with his brother Gaspard on a trip to Italy. The two brothers worked in Rome where Gaspard died on 7 March 1641. Jan then returned to Antwerp where he married Joanna van Weerden on 31 May 1642. Not long after giving birth to their only child Peeter, his wife died on 6 April 1643. In these collaborations Jan van Balen painted the figures.

Garland paintings

A special type of collaborative painting on which Jan van Balen collaborated regularly with Jan Brueghel the Younger are the so-called 'garland paintings'. His father Hendrick van Balen played a role in the development of the genre of garland paintings, which typically show a flower garland around a devotional image or portrait. Together with Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick van Balen had painted the first known garland painting around 1607–1608 for Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo, a passionate art collector and Catholic reformer. Borromeo requested the painting to respond to the destruction of images of the Virgin in the preceding century and it thus combined both his interests in Catholic reform and the arts.

The genre of garland paintings was inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Spanish Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally. Garland paintings were usually collaborations between a still life and a figure painter. The genre was initially connected to the visual imagery of the Counter-Reformation movement.

Like their fathers, the sons of the inventors of the genre of garland painting also collaborated on similar paintings. An example of a collaborative garland painting of Jan van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Younger is the Flower garland with Holy Family (Hampel Auctions on 26 June 2014 Munich, lot 193). The medallion in the centre depicts the Holy Family while the garland consists of flowers and fruits with a symbolic connection to the devotion to Mary. Van Balen painted the medallion while Brueghel painted the abundant garland.