Page 46 - Jordaens

here for conscious borrowing in emulation is unnecessary as the pose nearly repeats that used for the maid in
Jordaens’ earlier portrayal of himself with his parents and siblings in the Hermitage (Fig. 16 overleaf). 53
Behind the group of three by the table is a fourth
servant, her face lit by the fire in the cave. Jordaens
would have found in Rubens’ work of about 1615 two
paintings where candlelight threw light and shadow on
a face: Judith with the Head of Holofernes in Braunschweig
(Fig. 17) and Night Scene with an old Woman and Child
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in the Mauritshuis. The younger artist continued to
explore the play of artificial light in the Maidservant
55
with a Basket of Fruit, which repeats the central motif
of a tapestry design for one of the already discussed
Scenes of Country Life.
In Jordaens’ earliest existing painting of 1616, the
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Adoration of the Shepherds, the artist juggled with
two different artificial light sources, emulating
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Rubens who in his earlier Samson and Delilah had
manipulated four. However at the entrance to
Fig. 17. Rubens, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Braunschweig.
Calypso’s cave he was content to contrast the strong
outdoor light flooding low onto the protagonists with the lurid glow from the darkness within. This natural
light emphasizes the muscled back of Hermes, contrasting it with the smooth female forms and in particular
the impassive and beautiful, rose-tinted face of the goddess, as yet unmoved, as Hermes raises his wine glass
to her in acknowledgement of her hospitality.
a 56. Oil on canvas, transferred from wood, 106.7 x 76.2 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 67.187.76.
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n the widening scope of pictorial representation in Antwerp at the time when Jordaens was embarking on
his career, still-life and animal specialists began to come to the fore. It remains debateable as to whether
Ihe ever turned to still-life specialists for the fruit and flowers that were to enhance his renderings of
abundance and fertility, but his protean genius embraced the depictions of animals early on, and the alert goat
standing in the entrance to the cave must be one of the artist’s earliest treatments of what was to become a
favourite creature. Above, a parrot and peacock are also harbingers of Jordaens’ well-observed menagerie.
In the treatment of the bread and fruit brought to the feast, Jordaens shows himself to have mastered the
still-life idiom established by the great Frans Snyders (1579-1657).
For the alert viewer the two exotic birds might have added associations that provided further accents to
Homer’s story. In the parrot could be read references to both the eloquence of Hermes and maybe the
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love harboured by Calypso , while in the peacock would have been seen the emblem of the goddess Hera,
protectress of marriage.
a
ermes at Calypso’s Table by Jordaens of c. 1625-35 has only recently come to light and thus has not been
discussed in studies on the artist. It is at once mysterious in atmosphere and imbued with a sense of
H potential drama, a striking addition to those works Jordaens executed both to accompany and be part
of his preparations for one of his earliest essays in the tapestry business. In this case, it takes the composition
53. Oil on canvas ,175 x 137.5 cm, State Hermitage Museum, inv. no. GE 484, see N. Gritsay and N. Babina, State Hermitage
Museum Catalogues Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Flemish Painting, New Haven/London, pp. 147-149.
54. Oil on panel 79 x 64 cm, kept by Rubens for his own collection, offered by Sotheby’s, London, 7 July 2004, lot 30.
55. Oil on canvas, 119.6 x 157 cm, Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, inv. no. 84.
.
57. Oil on panel, 185 x 205 cm. London, National Gallery, inv. no. 6461.
58. See the commentary on the French School, c. 1530, Portrait of a Lady with a Parrot in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in
Walker Art Gallery, Foreign Catalogue, Mersey County Council,1972,I,pp.76-77.
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