Page 32 - Jordaens

There are several aspects connected with the early years of Jordaens’ career concerning which our lack of imposing self-portrait, which broadcasts the artist’s self-
knowledge is particularly frustrating. Rubens was about eighteen years older than Jordaens, yet they had both confidence and celebrates the success that had come with
been by taught by the long-lived Adam van Noort; the guild records show that he was a popular teacher, but we his early maturity. The dimensions are slightly larger than
have little idea of his manner or style. Nor have we any idea whether Jordaens stayed on as his apprentice until an earlier group portrait in St Petersburg in which Jordaens
he became a master or why the young man should have been listed in the Guild’s main register for 1615/16 as a 29
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waterschilder. It seems strange that Jordaens was taught this technique, a speciality of nearby Mechelen used in depicted himself with his parents and siblings. There the
the production of wall-hangings, especially when he showed himself early to be extremely able in the handling artist also gave himself prominence, but nevertheless he is
of oil paint. Exponents of the technique were rare in Antwerp: when Jordaens was enrolled (as one of two) in seated like his parents and three of his elder sisters. Indeed,
the 1615/16 guild accounting year only six others had been so registered since 1600. the later family group betrays an ambition, both social
and artistic, that distinguishes it from any self-portrait by
The handling of water-based pigments was also required for the execution of the heavy paper cartoons, which his likely mentor Rubens or his younger competitor Van
were cut into narrow strips and placed beneath the looms so as to be readily legible for the tapestry weavers Dyck. Not until the late 1630s, when Rubens portrayed his
to copy. An early biography of Jordaens credits him in a garbled and muddled way with having executed second wife leaving their town house with her son (Musée
tapestry cartoons for Rubens, and it remains a possibility that the young Jordaens, having advertised himself as
a waterschilder, was employed by Rubens to prepare his designs for the History of Decius Mus, his first venture in du Louvre, Paris) was anything created in Antwerp to rival
the tapestry trade, for the weavers. A contract between the weavers and their client for the tapestry cycle was its pretension, except the over-life-size depictions of the Fig. 4. Jordaens, The Family of the Artist, Madrid. Museo
signed in November 1616. This theory is not necessarily undermined by the fact that another young artist of Habsburgs in the huge decorations painted to welcome the Nacional del Prado.
exceptional ability and six years Jordaens’ junior, Anthony van Dyck, was credited quite early with the execution Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand to Antwerp in 1635.
of the cartoons. In this connection, the authorship of the Decius Mus series owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein
has long been debated, but what is clear is that it did not comprise the working cartoons consulted by the weavers In the autumn of 1621 the young Van Dyck, having established his eminence in Antwerp and his promise in
at their looms so Jordaens’ execution of it is not at issue. While there is slightly later documentary evidence to London, which he had visited briefly in 1620-21, made the journey south to Italy. Jordaens had not followed
establish Van Dyck’s collaboration with Rubens, for Jordaens’ association with the dominant artistic personality the traditional path to Italy, probably not only because of his early marriage but also, given what we believe was
of Antwerp there is only the visual testimony provided by his early, but not earliest production, from about
1616, the year of his first extant dated painting. his familiarity with Rubens, because the older artist had sufficient artistic resources - a collection of secondary
material and of works of art - from which Jordaens could learn and greatly benefit. Indeed, it is in Rubens’ milieu

In 1620, Van Dyck was the only one of Rubens’ assistants to be named in the contract for the Antwerp and in his art that it is most fruitful to search for many of the formal idioms of Jordaens’ art.
Jesuit Church commission. The following year, when Van Dyck was still active in the city, Jordaens was
appointed (unwillingly, because the duties of the post were time-consuming) Dean of the Guild of St Luke,

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thus demonstrating the esteem in which he was already held by the patriciate of the city hall. Probably in the a
same year, the artist painted the group portrait of himself and his family now in the Prado in which his daughter,
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aged about four, stands beside her seated mother (Fig. 4). Opposite is the artist, leaning on a fashionable
‘spaansestoel’; in the centre stands their young servant. This masterpiece astonishes by virtue of its size and the
27. D’Hulst et al., [Exh. Cat.] Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1993), 1993, pp. 7-8.
28. Oil on canvas, 181 x 187 cm. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. P01549.
26. D’Hulst et al. [Exh. Cat.], Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1993), 1993, p. 7. 29. Oil on canvas, 175.2 x 137.5 cm. St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, inv. no. 484.

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