Jan van Balen Jan van Balen Jan van Balen (21 July 1611 in Antwerp – 14 March 1654) was a Flemish painter known for his Baroque paintings of history and allegorical subjects. He also painted landscapes and genre scenes. Jan van Balen was the son of Hendrick van Balen and Margriet Briers. His father was a prominent painter in Antwerp and played an important role in the renewal of Flemish painting in the early 17th century. He was also one of the teachers of Anthony van Dyck. Jan van Balen had two brothers, Gaspard (born in 1615) and Hendrik (born in 1620) who
Anthony van Dyck his "Iconography", eventually a very large series of prints with half-length portraits of eminent contemporaries. Van Dyck produced drawings, and for eighteen of the portraits he himself etched with great brilliance the heads and the main outlines of the figure, for an engraver to work up: "Portrait etching had scarcely had an existence before his time, and in his work it suddenly appears at the highest point ever reached in the art". However, for most of the series he left the whole printmaking work to specialists, who mostly engraved everything after his drawings. His own etched plates appear not to