Oil on panel

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The two brothers often collaborated, combining Hieronymus’s graceful figural idiom with Frans’s complex narrative structures and moral intent. Their workshop played a key role in defining Antwerp’s 17th-century artistic identity.

The central scene, rendered in full color, shows the prodigal son indulging in debauchery, while surrounded by music, food, and drink. The lively company, richly dressed and theatrically posed, exemplifies the Francken workshop’s fascination with moral spectacle and social allegory.

Surrounding the main composition are eight smaller scenes painted in grisaille, narrating the son’s journey in sequence: receiving his inheritance, departing from home, wasting his fortune, falling into poverty, tending pigs, and finally returning to his father’s forgiveness and the celebratory feast of reconciliation.

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