The Sense of Sight

Janssens's Sense of Sight, in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, belongs to the Five Senses series that was among the most commercially reliable allegorical productions in Antwerp during the early seventeenth century. Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens produced a celebrated collaboration on the same theme. The Five Senses allowed painters to personify each sensory faculty as an allegorical female figure while simultaneously showcasing still-life painting, scientific instruments, and architectural settings associated with each sense. Sight — associated with mirrors, telescopes, paintings within paintings, celestial globes, and optical instruments — was typically the most elaborate of the five, allowing the greatest range of reflective and illusionistic technical demonstration. Janssens's version applies his monumental figure style to this intimate genre, creating a distinctive hybrid between large-scale allegory and cabinet painting.

Canvas with a large-scale female allegory of Sight surrounded by the optical and pictorial instruments that define her domain: a mirror, a magnifying glass, celestial and terrestrial globes, perhaps an easel with paintings or a telescope. The mirror is the most technically demanding element — a mirror within a painting doubles the pictorial illusion — and Janssens renders it with care. The figure's direct engagement with a mirror or optical device links her personified sense to its active operation.