Norbert Heylbrouck snuff box

The most beautiful snuff box in the Merghelynck Museum collection is undoubtedly this Rococo masterpiece by the famous Ghent engraver Norbert Heylbrouck. At the top is an allegory of the arts. The sides show the birth of Venus, the gods on Mount Olympus, Vulcan's forge and the god Neptune. It remains a mystery who Norbert Heylbrouck is, the maker of the snuff box. Was it father Norbert Sr. (1700-1762) or son Norbert Jr. (1734-1785)? It was probably the father, as he was the more famous engraver of the two. He made many snuff boxes and retained his reputation even after he was sentenced to death for counterfeiting (fortunately for him, the sentence was not carried out).
The scene in which the god of the sea commands the winds seems to be a mirrored miniature version of the mural that Norbert Jr. created for the staircase of the Hotel Vander Meersche in Ghent. He could, of course, have borrowed a motif from his father. (see image at the bottom of this page)
There is also a doppelganger of our snuff box. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has an almost identical copy with the same dimensions. There is one difference: where the pointing figure representing architecture is a man in our box, in Boston it is a woman.