Jan van Kessel was born in Antwerp into a renowned family of Flemish painters. His father, Hieronymus van Kessel (1578-1636), was a successful portrait painter, and his mother, Paschasia Brueghel, was the daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), further cementing the fame of this dynasty descended from Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In 1634, Van Kessel registered with the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a pupil of the history painter Simon de Vos (1603-1676), becoming a full master a decade later. He also trained under his uncle Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678), who tasked him with replicating his compositions.

On 11 June 1647, Van Kessel married Maria van Apshoven, witnessed by his uncle the prominent painter David Teniers the Younger serving. The couple had thirteen children, two of whom became painters: Ferdinand van Kessel (1648-1696), who continued in his father's style, and Jan van Kessel the Younger (1654-1708), portrait painter at the court of King Charles II of Spain. Despite his prolific output and popularity throughout Europe, he died with substantial debts.

Van Kessel specialized in exquisitely detailed small-scale floral still lifes, meticulous studies of insects, and allegorical series representing the four elements, the senses, or the continents. Executed on copper or panel in vibrant colors and meticulous detail, many of these miniature paintings served to decorate fine art cabinets or Wunderkammern—cabinets of curiosities that blended art (artificalia) and natural specimens (naturalia), fashionable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.