London, Brod Gallery, Jan Brueghel the Elder: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, 21 June – 20 July, 1979, no. 8, colour illus. (cat. by K. Ertz)
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brueghel.  Une dynastie de peintres, 18 September – 18 November, 1980, no. 116 (cat. by K. Ertz)
New York, Richard L. Feigen & Co., Landscape Painting in Rome 1595- 1675, 30 January – 23 March 1985,
no. 15.
Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London, Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings, Catalogue 12, 2000, no. 7.
On loan to the National Gallery, London, from February 2011 – December 2023

Christ Preaching at the Seaport is an early work by one of the finest Flemish artists of the seventeenth-century. Everything about this painting, from the delicacy of the still life at the lower left to the pools of light that lead the eye through the composition, conveys the dynamism and technical brilliance associated with Jan Brueghel the Elder. The artist’s fame rested on his ability to portray the natural world with what was seen as unparalleled authenticity and paintings such as Christ preaching at the Seaport were rigorously sought after by the greatest collectors of his time.[i] In this work, painted just after his return from a six-year stay in Italy, Brueghel combined close observation of the natural world with the kind of fantastic terrain that dominated sixteenth-century conventions of landscape painting.[ii] The result is stunning—the viewer is taken on a fantasy journey the landmarks of which are the sights sounds, and smells of everyday life.

We enter the composition through the two figures sitting at the base of a tree in the left foreground. They have abandoned their catch, elegantly strewn on the ground before them, in response to the gesture of a third man standing just over the hilltop. He points in the direction of the valley below indicating an event of some significance that, like many of Brueghel’s religious subjects, is not immediately recognizable. Indeed, what the viewer first notices when looking at this painting is not the subject for which it has become known but the bustle of an active port—men hauling in the day’s catch, women disciplining their children, and merchants haggling over prices. However, in the middleground a large crowd has begun to gather around one of the fishing boats moored halfway up the coastline. Clear bright sunlight illuminates the faces turned with rapt attention toward the figure addressing them. He stands with arms outstretched and a halo encircles his head, attributes that identify him as none other than Christ. 

This scene does not seem to refer to any particular event in the life of Christ but is one of many depictions of preaching and conversion in Flemish art of the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries. Jan’s father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1530-1569), painted scenes of the preaching of St. John the Baptist on a number of occasions and copies were made by Jan’s brother, Pieter the Younger, to satisfy the demand of the seventeenth-century market. In addition to providing an opportunity to paint landscape, the theme of preaching out of doors may have gained popularity in the second half of the sixteenth-century as a result of the open-air services led by “field preachers” at the time of the 1565-66 Iconoclasm. Protestants fled the image-filled city churches to worship in fields and woods, their own spiritual places where the word of God alone was the focus of thought and prayer.[iii] While Brueghel does not seem to espouse any particular set of beliefs in Christ Preaching at the Seaport, his emphasis on the direct transmission of Christ’s message without the intermediary of religious ceremony is clear.

Brueghel painted Christ Preaching at the Seaport in 1597, the year after his return to Antwerp from Italy. As with his father before him, the journey across the Alps inspired a taste in Jan for mountainous views, and a number of his early works are set in Alpine landscapes.[iv] Brueghel scholar Klaus Ertz discusses Christ Preaching at the Seaport as both a chronological and conceptual midway point between two works, Coastal Landscape with the Sacrifice of Jonah (Kettwig, Collection Girardet), painted in Italy in 1595, and Sea Harbour with Christ Preaching of around 1598 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek).[v] All three works were painted within a span of three years and Ertz considers the first two as steps in a larger painterly project culminating in the Munich composition. For Ertz, the Munich painting is Brueghel’s first major work and the importance of Coastal Landscape with the Sacrifice of Jonah and Christ Preaching at the Seaport depends on their status as earlier incarnations of it.

All three paintings share the same basic compositional structure: a still life scene in the foreground left with figures engaged in daily tasks, the coast line that leads the eye from right to left into the distance, dramatic rock formations in the centre of the composition and a mountain range at the far left. The transitions between foreground, middleground, and background become successively softer in these three works, a change interpreted by Ertz as progress towards the goal of creating an ever more naturalistic landscape. The relationship between the three works, from this point of view, is easy to see. The figures in the 1595 painting are placed in self-contained groups that diminish haltingly in size to signify the recession of space. The two fishermen and the figure standing atop the hill in Christ Preaching at the Seaport also appear in the 1595 composition. In both cases the strongly delineated foreground zone establishes the pace of spatial recession. From this starting point in Christ Preaching at the Seaport, pools of strong sunlight alternate with forms cast in shadow to create a sort of visual rhythm that leads the eye through the middleground to the mountain range in the distance. Highly lit passages alternate with forms flattened into silhouette, most dramatically seen with the figures standing on a hill in the left middleground in front of a path bathed in sunlight. Brueghel’s strategic use of the colour red further directs the route of the eye into the distance.

Brueghel abandoned the earlier device of the prominent foreground in the Munich composition. Beyond this dramatic change, the noticeably smoother transitions between foreground and background are largely due to the greater number of figures populating the landscape. Subtle innovations such as this, rather than any fundamental change in Brueghel’s conception of landscape, account for the differences in appearance between these three works.[vi] The gradual change of a single motif in all three compositions, for example, illustrates the artist’s move away from sixteenth-century landscape tradition. The dramatic rock formation in the background of each scene becomes progressively tamer in its appearance, smaller in its relationship to the rest of the compositional elements, and further from the foreground. It is interesting to note that the more recent Brueghel’s Italian experience was, the more he seemed to rely on the traditional Flemish landscape as a model. As Dutch and Flemish artists were famous in Italy as landscapists, one wonders if Brueghel’s adherence to tradition had less to do with an inability to paint naturalistic landscape than with a desire on the part of his Italian patrons for images of that kind.

BIOGRAPHY

Jan Brueghel was born in Brussels in 1568, the second son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1520/25-1569) and Maeycken Coecke van Aelst. His father died shortly after his birth and biographer and art theorist, Karel Van Mander, relates that he studied with Peeter Goetkindt. Brueghel travelled to Italy between 1589 and 1596 and in Milan met Cardinal Federico Borromeo, one of his most important patrons. Upon his return to Antwerp, he joined the St. Luke’s Guild and became dean in 1601. He travelled to Prague and Nuremburg between 1604 and 1606, and was appointed court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in Brussels in 1606. Around 1613, he visited Holland on a diplomatic mission. He painted an extensive range of subjects, from landscapes and still lifes to history paintings. His works were highly prized and made him wealthy. He taught his son, Jan Brueghel the Younger and Daniel Seghers and his grandsons included Jan van Kessel and David Teniers III. 

                                                                                            Adapted from an earlier essay by Dr. Meredith M. Hale