Jan van Kessel the Younger are attributed about 200 small still lifes produced in Southern Europe in the late 16th and early 17th century. Jan van Kessel the Younger's small known authentic oeuvre is different in style and execution and substantially higher in quality than the works, which have now been attributed to Pseudo Jan van Kessel the Younger. His portrait style was described by his contemporary Antonio Palomino as very close to that of his fellow Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck. Van Kessel was a specialist of the genre of group portraits. An example is the "Portrait of a family in a garden" in
Daniel van den Dyck biographer Carlo Ridolfi's book on Venetian painters of 1648 entitled "Le maraviglie dell'Arte ovvero, Le vite degli Illustri Pittori Veneti and dello Stato". He was also praised by Marco Boschini in his "La carta del navegar pitoresco" of 1660, a panygeric poem about Venetian painting. Boschini dedicated two pages to van den Dyck and represented the artist in a print as "Jupiter embellishing Virtue with a royal mantle". Giovan Francesco Loredano, one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incogniti, a learned society of freethinking intellectuals established in 1630 in Venice, often ordered the illustrations for his multiple writings from