6 Replies to “Eye Candy for Today: Rubens and Brueghel”

  1. I don’t know if Breughel did many collaborative works, but I know that Rubens did several, like this amazing piece, Prometheus Bound, here in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in which Rubens again did the figure and Frans Synders painted the eagle. (This thing is eight feet high!)

  2. Rubens was exceptional in his hiring of other artist-specialists with whom to collaborate. The Met usually has another collaboration with Breughel on display, a garden of eden scene lush with animals and foliage by Jan Breughel. Other collaborations included Jan Fyt who specialized in dogs, birds and other animals and Snyders who was great with the larger, more ferocious game like lions and tigers. Some of these were studio assistants who developed specialized repertoires. It must have been quite a workshop, especially when it was under the management of the teenaged Anthony van Dyck whose imitation of the Rubens style at one point was so good that it still confuses experts today.

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