Attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder and Studio

This intriguing sheet would appear to illustrate, on its two sides, two different aspects of the activity of Jan Brueghel the Elder and his workshop. It is debatable which side should be considered recto and which verso, but the more complete composition appears to record, in reverse, and probably in some kind of chalk offset, the composition of a variant of a known 1595 painting by the artist, with which it shares not only its dimensions but also many details of topography and staffage.¹ This drawing could have been made in connection with the process by which offsets of composition drawings were transferred onto panels to function as the basis for paintings, or could be the work of an engraver, made as part of the process of producing a print after Brueghel’s painting. 

On the other side, however, we find some much more spontaneous figure studies, which, though executed in the uncharacteristic medium of red chalk, are clearly of high quality, and seem convincing as the work of the master himself. 

1. Sold, London, Sotheby's, 5 December 2018, lot 11; K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Altere, 4 vols., Lingen 2008, vol. II, pp. 484-6, no. 217