Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen
Diana and Callisto
circa 1605-1608
Oil on copper
26 cm x 37.6 cm (10 1/4 in. x 14 13/16 in.)
Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1982

Son of the famous Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Jan Brueghel was probably the most significant painter in oil on copper. Noted for their specialized craft, fine material, and exquisite finish, paintings in this technique were in vogue throughout Europe during the period. Brueghel apparently learned the technique from other Netherlandish painters in Rome and cultivated it while he was the guest of Federico Borromeo in Milan. A good half of his surviving production is oil on copper, and half of that involves landscape. These landscapes tend to his father's types, but with the subtle invention and complex conventions of the late-Mannerist painters. Like many painters on copper, Brueghel often collaborated with other artists. Hendrick van Balen, the leading Romanist painter in Antwerp, was his favorite partner. Van Balen was responsible for the classicizing figures in many of Brueghel's paintings after his return from Italy in 1597. This painting is an excellent example of their collaboration. Typically, its small size makes the ample composition, full pictorial development, and luxuriant atmosphere inherently wondrous. In excellent condition, the surface conveys the exceptional material beauty of Brueghel's style. Based upon Ovid's Metamorphoses, Diana's discovery of the nymph Callisto's pregnancy by Jupiter was a frequent subject of large-scale mythological pictures of the sixteenth century.