Page 23 - Jordaens

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being St Peter finding the tribute money). He also eschewed battle scenes, except for his early design of a
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tapestry which showed Alexander at the battle of Issus. Otherwise he mastered genres which painters of more
concentrated vision made their specialities, for instance animal painting, still life and landscape, but these were
always subsidiary elements in his figure compositions, which were drawn from a wide range of biblical, classical
and proverbial sources. Jordaens comes across as generous-minded, exuberant and inventive, although - at times
to modern sensibilities - he was not alone in occasionally pointing up crude ideas or motifs.
a daughter he married very soon after he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1615/1616. The
he published facts about the artist’s life show him dedicated to the pursuit of his profession and never
diverted - like Rubens - by scholarly pursuits or civic duty. There are records concerning his taking in
Tapprentices, of property disputes with his neighbours, of one or two lawsuits concerning works of art
and of journeys to the Protestant Northern Netherlands. But we know little about his friendships, intellectual
interests, extensive study of architecture or even his collections. Concerning the latter we know of a sale of
his possessions soon after his death, but not much about its contents; however we do have information on
the remnants of his estate from the catalogue of the 1734 sale by his descendants. Concerning his interest in
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architecture, we have the magnificent façade of his house in Antwerp dated 1641, and the richly detailed
backdrops of buildings which often embellished his work. Evidence of his intellectual pursuits is only provided
by his art, which shows him to have been an inspired student of classical literature and a sympathetic and
enthusiastic interpreter of Netherlandish folklore.
Although in 1659 a city tax survey, calculated on the basis of the number of hearths or fireplaces in a property,
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placed Jordaens among the four hundred wealthiest citizens of Antwerp, there is some evidence that points
7. Oil on canvas, 281 x 468 cm, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, see J. Wadum et al., Jordaens: The Making of a
Masterpiece, Copenhagen, 2008.
8. For example, see K. Nelson, ‘Jacob Jordaens: Design for Tapestry’, (Pictura Nova V), Turnhout, 1998, pp. 60-62, no.2.
9. An exhaustive study of the house and the available sources about it was published by A. Tijs, Rubens en Jordaens. Barok in eigen
huis, 1984.
10. D’Hulst et al., [Exh. Cat.] Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1993), 1993, p. 16.
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to a degree of social isolation on his part. True, we know of visitors to his studio and appreciate hearsay of his
enjoying company with wine of an evening, but he was only asked once in his long life to stand as a godparent
and once to act as a witness to a marriage. To this indicator of a restricted social milieu can perhaps be associated
the record of a darker happening in late July 1642, when his wife was abused by a neighbour who then, two days
later with her husband and others threatened her again with a knife as she sat outside her house. 11
Possibly this unpleasant abuse in the Hoogstraat was provoked by differences of religious faith. Among his early
works is his group portrait of himself playing music with the family of his teacher, Adam van Noort, whose
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group portrait shows Jordaens treating himself as very much one of the van Noort family; following Jordaens’
mother-in-law’s death, his former teacher moved in to live in the Jordaens household. Van Noort had earlier
been registered as a Lutheran. So it is clear that his milieu was Protestant and this in a Catholic country where
Protestant worship was to be penalised. Jordaens himself was brought up a Catholic and his marriage to Catharina
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van Noort was solemnised in Antwerp Cathedral. Yet she seems to have adhered to her father’s profession
of faith and was to be buried in the Protestant cemetery at Putte, not far from Antwerp over the border in the
Dutch Republic. It is likely that both she and her father influenced Jordaens who, nine years before his death,
was first openly accused of being Protestant. With increasing age he became more open about his faith, for
communion according to the Calvinist rite was for the first time recorded as celebrated in his house in 1675.
He too was to be buried at Putte.
However if the van Noort/Jordaens religious affiliation set the family socially apart from the majority in Catholic
Antwerp society, it can hardly be said to have had an injurious effect on the artist’s professional career, except
perhaps in respect to the relative paucity of ecclesiastic commissions and in so far as he was not called on to work
for or sought after by the Catholic/Habsburg élite in Brussels. The Court there was to prefer the art and services
of David Teniers the Younger. The latter’s work contrasted sharply with that of Jordaens: he concentrated on the
everyday and the anecdotal - usually on a small scale - rather than on the great religious and mythological themes
of history painting. In fact the two great Habsburg collectors during Jordaens’ career, King Philip IV of Spain
11. Ibidem, p. 12.
12. Oil on canvas, 130.5 x 159 cm. Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Gemäldegalerie
Alte Meister, inv. no. GK 107.
13. 15 May 1616. Antwerp, Felixarchief, Parish Register 196.
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