Jan Miense Molenaer’s early card players and the peasant heads after Pieter Bruegel the elder

Abstract

Summary This essay proposes that Haarlem genre artist Jan Miense Molenaer created two paintings, only known today from photographs in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD). The pictures depict peasants; two are playing cards, others are observers. Molenaer plausibly used print prototypes after the designs of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, adding observations from life of his present day. The figures are the same in the two pictures, concerning their costumes and gestures. Some slightly differ in their size and emotional reaction in one work with the employment of an extra participant. Repeating protagonists from one painting to the next with little change was a workshop practice Molenaer undertook frequently after he dated his paintings in 1629. It is suggested the artist may have known the prints after the elder Bruegel’s inventions through the Antwerp print market, or more directly through Adriaen Brouwer.