to have been based on compositions on which Jan Brueghel the Younger or his father Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen had collaborated before. Examples are The sleeping goddess Diana and her nymphs after the hunt, observed by satyrs based on an earlier composition of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen and The Feast of Bacchus (Auctioned at Dorotheum on 21 October 2014, Vienna, lot 27) based on an earlier composition of Jan Brueghel the Younger and Hendrick van Balen. In these collaborations Jan van Balen painted the figures. Garland paintings A special type of collaborative painting on which Jan van Balen collaborated regularly with Jan Brueghel the Younger are the so-called 'garland paintings'. His father Hendrick van Balen played a role in the development of the genre of garland paintings, which typically show a flower garland around a devotional image or portrait. Together with Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick van Balen had painted the first known garland painting around 1607–1608 for Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo, a passionate art collector and Catholic reformer. Borromeo requested the painting to respond to the destruction of images of the Virgin in the preceding century and it thus combined both his interests in Catholic reform and the arts. The genre of garland paintings was inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Spanish Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally. Garland paintings were usually collaborations between a still life and a figure painter. The genre was initially connected to the visual imagery of the Counter-Reformation movement. Like their fathers, the sons of the inventors of the genre of garland painting also collaborated on similar paintings. An example of a collaborative garland painting of Jan van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Younger is the Flower garland with Holy Family (Hampel Auctions on 26 June 2014 Munich, lot 193). The medallion in the centre depicts the Holy Family while the garland consists of flowers and fruits with a symbolic connection to the devotion to Mary. Van Balen painted the medallion while Brueghel painted the abundant garland. References External links 1611 births 1654 deaths Flemish Baroque painters Flemish history painters Painters from Antwerp