Circle By Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Holy Family With Saint John

Circle by Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

possibly by Hans Rottenhammer (1564-14 August 1625) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625)

Holy Family with Saint John

Oil on canvas, cm 149 x 109

with frame cm 153 x 114

Dated "1623"

The work, probably elaborated in the ramified context of the florid Rubensian workshop, could be based on iconographic stylisms introduced in Flanders in the early seventeenth century by the two famous artists Jan Bruegel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer.

Hans Rottenhammer was apprenticed to Hans Donauer in Munich. With the help of Duke William V of Bavaria, he left for Rome in 1589, where he worked in collaboration with Paul Brill and Jan Brueghel the Elder, who strongly influenced him. It was soon appreciated for its historical and mythological subjects of small format on copper. He then went to Venice, where he studied Tintoretto at the Scuola di San Rocco and the works of Paolo Veronese. He was commissioned by Duke Ferdinand of Mantua to carry out important works. From 1596 to 1606 he was in Venice, where Adam Elsheimer worked in his studio. He returned to Germany in 1606 and settled in Augsburg, where he acquired the right of citizenship and became a teacher in 1607. Worked in Bückeburg from 1609 to 1613, then returned to Augsburg, protected by the emperor Rudolf II, receiving important commissions for decorative themes and altarpieces.

The engravings of his paintings by the well-known Egidius Sadeleer and Lucas Kilian quickly made his compositions famous. In his work, Venetian composition patterns are combined with elements of Dutch painting - technique and landscape description. The richness of the details, the precision of the execution, the application to the enamelled rendering of the pictorial layer, the devoted intimacy of the approach to the subject are all elements that made his production sought.