Ferdinand van Kessel

According to Weyerman, Ferdinand's father was well known in his own day and only tipped his hat to Jan Brueghel the Elder, who was the "Phoenix of landscape paintings with animals and birds".

When these were well received, he invited van Kessel to come to Breda to make enough paintings to decorate a whole room in the Wilanów Palace.

Fire was a boy surveying implements of war, with gold and silver inlaid harness, drums, embroidered silk banners and spears with damask coverlets, with a small monkey smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of rossoly (rosée du soleil).

Van Kessel continued to make paintings for him from his home in Breda and refused an invitation to work at the Polish court.

He continued to fulfill commissions from Poland himself and subcontracted some of the work to other Antwerp painters (Historical allegories: Frans Ykens, Maas, Caspar Jacob van Opstal, Charles Emmanuel Biset; Landscapes: Pieter Spierinckx, Rysbregts, Peter van de Velde, Abraham Genoels; Flowers: Gaspar Peeter Verbruggen, Jan Baptist Bosschaert, Simon Hardimé, and Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger).