Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Younger ( , ; ; 13 September 1601 – 1 September 1678) was a Flemish Baroque painter. He was the son of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and grandson of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, both prominent painters who contributed respectively to the development of Renaissance and Baroque painting in the Habsburg Netherlands. Taking over his father's workshop at an early age, he largely painted the same subjects as his father in a style which was similar to that of his father. He gradually was able to break away from his father's style by developing a broader, more painterly, and less structured manner of painting. He regularly collaborated with leading Flemish painters of his time. His father was a friend and close collaborator of Rubens. Jan likely assisted with his father's large-scale commissions.
thumb|left|Nicolaas de Man at his country estate, portrait by [[Jan Thomas van Ieperen and landscape by Lucas van Uden]]
On the wishes of his father he traveled around 1622 to Milan where he was welcomed by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. The cardinal was a patron and friend of his father who had met in Rome about 30 years earlier.
thumb|Winter landscape, with Joos de Momper (II)
Jan learned that his father had died on 13 January 1625 from cholera only after his return to Northern Italy in Turin. Wanting to return to Antwerp immediately, he had to delay his departure for 16 days due to a severe fever. After recovering from his illness, he set off for his homeland by way of France. In Paris he met the Antwerp art dealer and painter Peter Goetkint the Younger, who was the son of Peter Goetkint the Elder, the master of Jan's father. Goetkint was eager to return to Antwerp because his wife was expected to deliver a baby soon. The child was born on 25 August, the day on which Jan Breughel arrived in Antwerp with his travelling companion who died a few days later.
thumb|left|Fight between Peasants
In 1626 he married Anna Maria Janssens, daughter of Abraham Janssens, a prominent history painter in Antwerp. It seems that his studio declined after this period and that he started to paint smaller scale paintings which commanded lower prices than those produced earlier. Jan de Younger further created a new painting category of animals in landscapes. Jan also painted various garland paintings in collaboration with other artists. They show the influence of Daniel Seghers.
Allegorical paintings
thumb|Allegory of War
Like his father, Jan the Elder produced various sets of allegorical paintings, in particular on the themes of the Five senses, the Four Elements. These paintings were often collaborations with other painters such as is the case with the five paintings representing the Five senses on which Brueghel and Pieter van Avont collaborated and of which an Allegory of Smell was auctioned at Dorotheum on 18 December 2017. Another recurring allegorical theme also treated by his father is Abundance. An example is the Allegory of abundance (c. 1624, Museo del Prado) in which fertility is represented by a six-breasted figure at the centre of the composition.
He gradually developed his own themes and style for his allegorical subjects. From the 1640s he created complex allegories dealing with subjects such as the horrors of war and the benefits of commerce, the arts and science. In particular the subject of the horrors of war occupied Jan Brueghel in the 1640s, when Europe was emerging from the Thirty Years' War. The long-hoped-for end of the war was achieved by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. A work made against this background is the Allegory of war (Lempertz 16 November 2013, Cologne Lot 1243). The work is full of symbols of war and strife such as weapons, fighting animals, zodiac symbols of bad luck in the heavens, the furies, a burning city, the god of war and the battling troops in the background which all evoke the theme of the horrors of war. In these mature works Jan Brueghel the Younger distanced himself from his father's models to create his own visual language, reflecting the new art and mood of his time.
Singeries
Jan Breughel the Elder had contributed to the development of the genre of the 'monkey scene', also called 'singerie' (a word, which in French means a 'comical grimace, behaviour or trick'). Comical scenes with monkeys appearing in human attire and a human environment are a pictorial genre that was initiated in Flemish painting in the 16th century and was subsequently further developed in the 17th century. Monkeys appear in medieval cathedral sculpture as symbols of evil, while in Renaissance art they were a personification of man. Monkeys were regarded as shameless and impish creatures and excellent imitators of human behaviour. These depictions of monkeys enacting various human roles were a playful metaphor for all the folly in the world. Painters could use the figure of the monkey to express moral judgement and dubious traits of human behaviour. A lively trade in tulips and tulip bulbs had developed in the Dutch Republic with prices rising to unprecedented levels. Speculation was rife, resulting in big profits and big losses. Brueghel's Satire of Tulipomania pokes fun at the tulip traders. The version in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem shows monkeys negotiating, weighing bulbs, counting money and handling administrative tasks. The monkey on the left holds a list of bulb prices. On the right, a monkey is urinating on tulips, thus mocking this tulip mania.
Gallery
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File:Pieter van Avont and Jan Breughel (II) - Flora in the Garden.jpg|Flora in the Garden, c. 1630, Kunsthistorisches Museum
File:Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld MET DP234687.jpg|Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld, c. 1630, Metropolitan Museum of Art
File:Jan Breughel (II) & Peter Paul Rubens (Studio) - Landscape with Diana and her Nymphs.jpg|Landscape with Diana and her Nymphs, figures by workshop of Rubens
File:Verheerlijking van handel en wetenschap Rijksmuseum SK-A-3027.jpeg|The apotheosis of commerce and science, 1640s, Rijksmuseum
</gallery>