Peace and Plenty

Janssens's Peace and Plenty of 1614, held in Wolverhampton Art Gallery, is an allegorical work produced during the period immediately following the Twelve Years' Truce (1609), which had brought temporary cessation of hostilities in the Spanish Netherlands. The allegory of Peace producing Plenty — typically showing the two virtues as female figures together, with Plenty's cornucopia overflowing beside Peace's olive branch — was a conventional celebration of the peace dividend, the material prosperity that came with the end of military disruption. Antwerp, which had lost its dominance as a trading city after the Spanish Fury of 1576 and the subsequent closure of the Scheldt River, nursed hopes of commercial revival under the Truce. Janssens's painting encodes these civic aspirations in the familiar language of classical allegory, positioning peace not as an abstract virtue but as a precondition for material abundance.

Panel with two large allegorical female figures — Peace and Plenty — rendered in Janssens's monumental Italianate style. The cornucopia of Plenty overflows with fruit, grain, and flowers, demanding still-life precision in its contents. Olive branch and dove for Peace provide the cleaner symbolic counterpoint. Warm, golden light floods both figures with the visual temperature of abundance. The figures' physical proximity and intertwined gestures suggest cause and consequence.