Galerie De Jonckheere, Paris ;

Acquis auprès de cette dernière par les parents des actuels propriétaires en 2004 ;

Collection particulière, France

Pieter Brueghel the Younger's treatment of this subject occurs relatively late in the painter's career. It was not until 1623 that Klaus Ertz, in his catalogue raisonné of the artist (1), noted examples of this theme, which bear witness to an accomplished iconography. There are two versions of the Wedding Procession dated that year, relatively close to each other, which are now in the Musée du Petit Palais (inv. 2500) in Paris (fig. 1) and the Worcester Art Museum (inv. 1991.176) in Massachusetts. The absence of a clearly identified original composition by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569) has led specialists to speculate on the identity of the model's inventor given that there were many collaborators working around the atelier of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and also, because numerous works from this period from the atelier have disappeared over time.

Although their theory is no longer accepted today, an initial group of researchers, led by Georges Marlier, believed that the Wedding Procession (fig. 2), which entered the collections of the Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles in 1966 (inv. K19666.1), was the original composition by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the one that inspired the ‘half-dozen replicas’ identified (2). Based on the 1689 inventory of the collection of Antwerp engraver Alexander Voet (1613-1689), which mentions ‘Een schoustuck, een bruy tskerckganck’ (3), the author associates this theme with decorative fireplace panels, which is universally accepted.

The attribution of our work to Jan Brueghel the Elder was suggested by Charles de Tolnay and then Fritz Grossman, and definitively accepted by Klaus Ertz (4).

Concerning the authorship of the original composition, which would have served as its model, there is a debate which moves towards another much more original supposition.

On his return from Italy in 1596, Jan Brueghel the Elder set about confronting his own art with his father's imposing legacy, before gradually taking a more independent path. Because he inherited the studio, and for personal reasons that are more difficult to establish, his elder brother devoted most of his life to disseminating compositions that had already been created, definitively attaching his personality to that of their father. In the case of the panel presented here, Klaus Ertz offers a demonstration that is an exception to this historically recognised rule.

Not recognising the subversive spirit of the father in the construction of the composition, but merely the scattered juxtaposition of some of his characteristic themes, he envisaged the Wedding Procession not as an original invention by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, but as a creation by a contemporary of lesser importance, influenced by his genius. Two names were put forward, that of Pieter Balten (1540-1584), around whom the very fine copy (fig. 3) in the Musée Calvet in Avignon (inv. 842.3.3) is attributed, and that of Maarten van Cleve (1527-1581), to whom the figures (fig. 4 and fig. 5) are linked (5). Trained in the sixteenth-century Brueghelian school, this artist, for now unidentified, would have imagined the composition at the end of the sixteenth century, which was taken up by Jan Brueghel the Elder on his return from Italy, before being developed in series by Pieter Brueghel the Younger from the 1620s onwards (6).

Unlike the other versions illustrated here (fig. 1 and fig. 2), our panel stands out for the absence of a number of iconic elements, such as the skull of a horse in the lower right-hand corner (fig. 6), which is often equated with a vanitas. Stripped of these references to the universe of the father, the work is freed and gains in decorative quality. The particularly meticulous treatment of the figures and the construction of the landscape make it a work characteristic of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, whose originality lies in its distance from traditional interpretations of existing paintings. The Wedding Procession appears as a conventional illustration of a ceremony that was customary in seventeenth-century Antwerp society, and its commission provides the artist with the best example of a successful wedding gift.

1 – Klaus Ertz, Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Lingen, 1988, T. II, p. 701, cat. E818 et E819.

2 – Georges Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels, 1969, p. 169.

3 – “a chimney panel, a wedding procession”

4 – Klaus Ertz, Op. cit., p. 633.

5 – Anonymous sale; London, Christie’s, 6 July 2010, n° 12.

6 – Klaus Ertz discusses this at length in the aforementioned catalogue.