Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child - Abraham Willemsens ( c.1605 - 1672)

ABRAHAM WILLEMSENS
c. 1605 - 1672
Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child in a landscape
Oil on copper
Signed lower left
Dimensions: 59 x 77 cm

THE ARTIST
Abraham Willemsens (c. 1605–1672) was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp, known for his history paintings, genre scenes, and copies after Rubens. His rediscovery in the early 1990s, following the identification of a painting bearing his full signature, has led to a gradual reconstitution of his oeuvre and clarification of long-standing attribution issues.
Willemsens trained and worked within the vibrant Antwerp artistic milieu, and his style shows affinities with Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick van Balen, and Gerard Seghers. He was also active in Paris around 1645, where he encountered the naturalistic manner of the Le Nain brothers, whose quiet domestic realism influenced his own treatment of figures.
Together with Pieter van Lint and Willem van Herp, Willemsens was among the principal Antwerp painters producing refined copies of Rubens’s oil sketches for the international art market. His body of work ranges from devotional and allegorical compositions to landscapes on copper animated by genre or religious scenes.

THE ARTWORK
In this serene “Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child in a Landscape,” Willemsens masterfully unites devotional intimacy with Baroque grandeur. Set against a sweeping wooded landscape suffused with soft light, the Holy Family is shown resting beneath a tree, while the Divine light of God the Father breaks through the clouds above.
The delicate modeling of flesh, the tender interaction of the figures, and the richly modulated sky reveal Willemsens’s deep understanding of Rubensian harmony, filtered through the intimate sensibility of the Le Nain brothers. The work exemplifies his preference for copper supports, which allowed for precision in the rendering of detail and luminous transparency in color.
This composition reflects the artist’s ability to fuse Flemish Baroque dynamism with a contemplative, almost pastoral spirituality—qualities that distinguish his finest religious works.