Lot 2051 Dα

The present work depicts Venus and Cupid in a garland and is dated 1642. It was made one year after Jan Philip van Thielen first turned to flower painting after beginning his apprenticeship under Daniel Seghers, the leading flower painter in Antwerp. The fact that he was accepted into the Guild of Saint Luke the same year shows that he was already an established artist at this point. He was already active as a painter of history paintings and had collaborated with Erasmus Quellinus the Younger and with Theodoor Rombouts, with whom he was related by marriage.
The flower garland motif was established by artists belonging to the circle of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo in Milan, for whom the first examples were painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen. The central scenes usually illustrate biblical themes, but later also mythological subjects such as in this work by van Thielen.