Abundance and the Four Elements

This 1615 panel from the Museo del Prado presents Abundance, personified as a richly draped female figure, surrounded by the four classical elements — fire, water, earth, and air — in a complex allegorical assembly typical of Antwerp's humanist iconographic tradition. The four elements, a framework inherited from Aristotelian natural philosophy, were among the most popular subjects for collaborative Flemish painting in the early seventeenth century, as they required both landscape specialists (for earth and water settings) and figure painters (for the personifications). Van Balen's contribution to this tradition, working in the year of his most productive collaborations with Jan Brueghel the Elder, demonstrates his facility for coordinating elaborate allegorical programmes. The Prado's acquisition — likely through Spanish Habsburg diplomacy or purchasing — reflects the taste of the Madrid court for the learned, decorative allegory that Antwerp produced in abundance during this period.

The panel format allows precise rendering of each elemental personification's identifying attributes — flames, marine creatures, cornucopiae, and birds — in Van Balen's characteristic fine-brush technique. The figure of Abundance is centrally placed, her overflowing cornucopia rendered with still-life-like detail. The compositional arrangement of elemental figures around a central personification follows the standard Antwerp allegorical template.