Page 72 - Jordaens

The motif of the peasant with his bowl of porridge, his
wife seated beside him with one arm outstretched dandling
on her lap the child who wears a kerchief, remained for
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a decade and a half dear to Jordaens . As the various
renditions advance chronologically so the features of the
satyr change subtly. His looks and age change, but so does
his mien - he begins to laugh as he gestures towards the
peasants. The addition of the satyr’s levity to Aesop’s fable

appears unique to Jordaens. The motifs recur once again in
a painting modified further c.1630-35 and set in an interior
(Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Inv.2615, Fig. 11). A small
modello for this work rearranged the two standing figures
and was engraved in reverse (Fig. 12) by Jacob Neefs in
Antwerp around 1610. It is lettered: Jac. Jordaens invent:/

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cum privilegio./Jacobus Neefs sculpsit. The compositional
Fig. 12. Jacob Neefs.
theme of the Satyr and the Peasant family was important
to Jordaens, for later in his career he was to adapt it, excising the figure of the satyr, in his peasant scenes such
as the Natura paucia contenta tapestry of c. 1644, Castle Hluboká, Bohemia, or his Scene of Peasants Eating in the

Gemäldegalerie in Cassel of c.1650.

16
Patrick Matthiesen

14. There are many copies and studio variants. A studio version of the Brussels picture was sold at Christie’s, Amsterdam 24/25
March 2016 lot 27; a workshop variant version of the Pushkin painting which may be the self-same as that published by Held in
1940 in Parnassus, vol.12, no 3 ‘Unknown Paintings by Jordaens in America,’ pp. 26-29, was sold at Lempertz 19 November
1994 lot 1381. A further workshop variant of the theme in an interior was sold last at Sotheby’s London 10 December 2015 lot
119, reproduced also in D’Hulst, Jacob Jordaens, London 1982, p.94, fig.59. A drawing attributed to Jordaens was with Otto
Naumann in New York and represents a transitional stage between the composition discussed here and that in Cassel (Fig.9),
while a painting in Munich in the Alte Pinakotek usually dated to 1621 but surely several years later introduces additional
figures and a cow into an interior, but also changes the physiognomy of the satyr (Fig.10).
15. Kunsthalle Bremen. Erwerbungen der letzen Jahren, Bremen, 1951, p. 58, no 23, illus. p. 14 (Fig.12).
16. I am indebted to the late Professor Michael Jaffé on whose 1983 entry for the painting, republished here, I have based my
updated catalogue entry.

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Detail of Plate 2