In 2025, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his death, the Musée de Flandre will pay tribute to one of the most important Antwerp painters of the seventeenth century: Jan Brueghel the Elder.

The last son of the great Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he scored his time with a sense of color and an extraordinary miniaturist’s touch. A specialist in landscapes, flowers, fruit, and animals, Brueghel often combined the skills of other painters charged with depicting figures.

His greatest collaborator, after Rubens, was Hendrick van Balen. This artist, now unknown, had a brilliant career. His oeuvre, plural, includes impressive church altarpieces as well as more intimate paintings on mythology or the Bible. A close friendship united the three men to the point that when Brueghel died, Van Balen and Rubens were appointed co-guardians of his children.

Thanks to numerous loans from the greatest European museums and private collections, the Musée de Flandre remains faithful to its policy of highlighting forgotten artists. Through his relationship with Brueghel, Hendrick van Balen’s work is revived.