Anna Maria Janssens

Anna Maria Janssens
Still life of flowers in a glass vase, 100 x 67 cm, signed
Born	c. 1609
Died	1668 (aged 62–63)
Nationality	Flemish
Occupation	Painter
Spouse	Jan Brueghel the Younger (m. 1626)
Children	11, including Abraham, Philips, and Jan Pieter
Father	Abraham Janssens

Anna Maria Janssens (circa 1609 – 1668) may have been a Flemish painter.

She was the daughter of the famous Flemish painter Abraham Janssens and on 5 July 1626 married the painter Jan Brueghel the Younger with whom she had eleven children.^[1][2] Her mother was Sara Goetkint, the daughter of Peter Goetkint the Elder, also a painter and the second teacher of Jan Brueghel the Elder, the father of her husband.^[3] Her exact date of birth is unknown but in a legal document of 1651, she is mentioned as having been 42 years old at the time, which would put her birth in c. 1609, rather than c. 1605, as suggested earlier.^[4] That would mean that she married young, around 17 years old.

She is generally identified as the painter of a signed but undated painting, Still life of Flowers in a Glass Vase, which was published by Ralph Warner in 1928.^[5] As Marie-Louise Hairs noted in 1985, and more recently Fred G. Meijer in 2013, these flowers are reminiscent of the work of another Flemish still-life painter, Alexander Adriaenssen.^[6]

No contemporary document refers to the daughter of Abraham Janssens/wife of Jan Brueghel the Younger as ‘painter’ and she was not registered as member of the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke.^[7] We hear of her in 1644, when she is one of the beneficiaries in the will of her mother at her death. Sara Goetkint leaves her living children a number of paintings by her late husband.^[8] Furthermore, Anna Janssens is mentioned in 1651, when she is asked to testify in a legal suit at the request of her sister-in-law Catharina Goetkint-Brueghel.^[9] In the papers of the Antwerp guild she is only referred to after her death in connection with the payment of death dues by her widower in (1667-)1668: “Ontfanck van de doodtschulden (Anna-Maria Janssens,) de huysvrouwe van mendeken. Breugel (Jan Brueghel II, schilder). 3. 4.”^[10] She was still alive but seriously ill on 11 March 1668, as is testified by another archival document.^[11]

It is unclear whether she still worked as a painter after her marriage and the birth of her first children. Apart from the fact that she is not documented as a painter, in the early modern period, most female artists in Flanders with a serious career remained childless and the majority even remained unmarried, for instance Michaelina Wautier, Catharina Ykens, and the three daughters of Jan Philip van Thielen, Anna Maria, Francisca Catharina and Maria Theresia van Thielen.^[12] Biographical details on the most famous Flemish woman artist of the 17th century, Clara Peeters, are inconclusive.^[13] On the contrary, Rachel Ruysch continued to paint and produce commissions throughout het marriage and adult life. She had 10 children, comparable to Anna Maria Janssens who had 11 children.

Recently, two more paintings in the art trade were associated with Anna Janssens. The first, Garland of flowers around a medaillon with the Holy Family and a music making angel, sold at auction with Dorotheum, Vienna in 2020, is oddly inscribed below the central image: ANNA JANS. Also, the style of the flowers does not correspond with the way the fully signed bouquet is rendered, as also observed by Dr. Fred G. Meijer.^[14] Moreover, the painting appears to follow a composition from the studio of Frans Francken the Younger of which an example is in the Musée de Louvre, Paris.^[15] The same can be said of a second work, Extensive bouquet of mixed spring and summer flowers in a wooden tub beside a squirrel, sold at auction with Bonham's London in 2020.^[16] At the time, the painting was offered with an attribution to someone in the Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Younger, at the authority of Dr. Fred G. Meijer, but it later resurfaced with art dealer Florence de Voldère in Paris under the name of Anna Janssens, with no clear explanation for this change of attribution.^[17][18]

• 
  Studio of Jan Brueghel the Younger or Anna Maria Janssens(?),Extensive bouquet of mixed spring and summer flowers in a wooden tub beside a squirrel
• 
  Frans Francken the Younger, Studio of Jan Brueghel the Younger and Anna Maria Janssens(?),Garland of flowers around a medaillon with the Holy Family and a music making angel
• 
  Frans Francken the Younger and Studio of Jan Brueghel the Younger, The Holy Family in a garland of flowers

References

1. notice of marriage in a footnote to the published list of artist, the Liggeren
2. Frans J. Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, Antwerp 1883, pp. 457 and 481 (in Dutch)
3. Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck, Haarlem 1604, fol. 233 verso (in Dutch). Abraham Janssens and Sara Goetkint had 8 children between 1603 and 1616. See also Van den Branden, op. cit. (note 2), p. 481
4. Archival document in FelixArchief, Antwerp: Not. J.S. Le Rousseau, N 2474 f 217. See Godelieve Van Hemeldonck, Kunst en Kunstenaars. Notities betreffende beeldhouwers, geelgieters, tafereelmakers, tapijtwevers, borduurders, schilders. Met bijlagen over opleidings- en arbeidscontracten, kunstinventarissen, kunsthandel, beeldekensafzetters en wandtapijten, Antwerp 2007 (typescript, in Dutch)
5. Ralph Warner, Dutch and Flemish flower and fruit painters of the 17th and 18th centuries, London 1928, p. 116, plate 53a
6. Marie-Louise Hairs, Les peintres Flamands de fleurs au XVIIe siècle, Brussels 1985, pp. 236-237 (in French), fig. 63 and Fred G. Meijer, "Janssens, Anna (Anna Maria)”, in: Sauer/De Gruyter, Allgemeines Künstler Lexikon. Band 77: Izaguirre-Jerace, Berlin-Munich 2013 (in German)
7. Sam Segal & Klara Alen, Dutch and Flemish Flower Pieces. Paintings, Drawings and Prints up to the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., Leiden and Boston 2020, part I, p. 329, note 162: ‘’Hairs states erroneously Anna Maria Janssens became a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1640.’’ See also Hairs, op. cit. (note 6), p. 237.
8. Archival document (Not. Tossijn Guyot, 1644, fol. 278), mentioned in: Van den Branden, op. cit. (note 2), p. 482
9. Archival document, see note 4
10. Philippe Rombouts & Théodore Van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, 2 vols., Antwerp and The Hague 1864-1876, part II, p. 381.
11. Archival document in FelixArchief, Antwerp: Not. B. van der Linden, N 3861 f-. See Van Hemeldonck, op. cit. (note 4). Also mentioned by Van den Branden, op. cit. (note 2), p. 458.
12. Adriaan van der Willigen & Fred G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, pp. 194-195, 215 and 223
13. Segal & Alen, op. cit. (note 7), part 1, pp. 243-246
14. Dorotheum, Vienna (10 nov 2020, lot 221): https://www.dorotheum.com/en/l/6938242/
15. Inv. no. 1412, see https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066364
16. Bonhams, London (4 July 2018, lot 61): https://www.bonhams.com/auction/24650/lot/62/workshop-of-jan-brueghel-the-younger-antwerp-1601-1678-an-extensive-bouquet-of-mixed-spring-and-summer-flowers-in-a-wooden-tub-beside-a-squirrel/
17. https://quintessenceblog.com/tefaf-new-york-fall-2018/
18. https://www.florencedevoldere.com

• Marie-Louise Hairs, Les peintres Flamands de fleurs au XVIIe siècle, Brussels 1985, pages 236–7
• Adriaan van der Willigen & Fred G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, page 117
• Fred G. Meijer, "Janssens, Anna (Anna Maria)”, in: Sauer/De Gruyter, Allgemeines Künstler Lexikon. Band 77: Izaguirre-Jerace, Berlin and Munich 2013
• Sam Segal & Klara Alen, Dutch and Flemish Flower Pieces. Paintings, Drawings and Prints up to the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., Leiden and Boston 2020, part I, page 329