DURING A VISIT to the Frieze Masters art fair in London’s Regents Park in October 2025, we looked at a collection of Flemish paintings being exhibited by the De Jonckheere Gallery. One of these was “Allegory of Sight: A Collector’s Cabinet with Venus and Cupid”. It was painted in Antwerp between 1601 and 1678 by “Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Younger”. It is an example of several paintings with this title. According to Wikipedia, these artworks:

“… showcases varied objects associated with sight, the arts, and navigation. The painting was heavily influenced by The Five Senses, a series of allegorical paintings done by the younger Brueghel’s father, Jan Brueghel the Elder.”

Indeed, the picture we saw at Frieze is chockfull of objects: paintings, sculptures (many of them portrait busts), navigational & astronomical instruments, documents, animals, a mirror, and many other things. The painting is a depiction of a Kunstkammer, which is (https://galleryintell.com/artex/allegory-of-sight-by-jan-brueghel-the-elder-and-peter-paul-rubens/):

“…translated as “rooms of art” and are meant to offer a glimpse into the depth and variety of these collections accumulated by the Dutch aristocracy.”

The painting at Frieze contains a gold chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. It is a decorative example, which includes an object that has interested me greatly since I was a teenager. At the top of the chandelier there is a double-headed eagle (‘DHE’). This is a bird with two heads, each on its own neck. In the painting, each of the heads is surmounted by a crown topped with a small cross. My interest in the DHE began when my fascination with Albania, whose flag contains a DHE, began in the mid-1960s. Chandeliers with  DHEs appear in several other paintings by members of the Brueghel family (and their studios) in which the subject matter described above was depicted. I asked one of the gallery assistants about the DHE on the chandelier, and she had no idea about it. I was hoping that she would confirm my suspicion that the two-headed bird in the painting was related to the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs, both of whose emblems included the DHE.

On returning home, I investigated further, and found a book (available online), “Rubens & Brueghel, A Working Friendship” by Anne T. Woollett and Ariane van Suchtelen. It deals mainly with paintings by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), the father of Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678). In relation to the painting of “Sight” by Brueghel the Elder, it noted:

“It has often been assumed that this costly series of paintings was commissioned by Archdukes Albert and Isabella. Rubens had, after all, held the post of court painter since his return from Italy in 1 6 0 8, and Brueghel regularly worked for the court at Brussels. The couple’s palaces serve as background scenery in three of the five depictions, and Sight contains a double portrait of the regents and an equestrian portrait of Albert, as well as a brass chandelier crowned with the Habsburgs’ double-headed eagle.”

This being the case and because Brueghel’s son (and his workshop) would have been influenced by his father’s art, it is perhaps unsurprising to see the DHE on the chandelier in the painting we viewed at Frieze.