Jacob Jordaens

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Self-Portrait with Parents, Brothers, and Sisters by Jacob Jordaens (c. 1615). Oil on canvas. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Jacob Jordaens (May 19, 1593 - October 18, 1678), was a Flemish painter, born in Antwerp.

Like Rubens, he studied under Adam van Noort. A marriage to his master's daughter in 1616, the year after his admission to the guild of painters, prevented him from visiting Rome. He was forced to content himself with studying such examples of the Italian masters as he found at home; but a far more potent influence was exerted upon his style by Rubens, who employed him sometimes to reproduce small sketches in large format.

Jordaens is second to Rubens alone in their special department of the Flemish school. In both there is the same warmth of colour, truth to nature, mastery of chiaroscuro and energy of expression; but Jordaens is wanting in dignity of conception, and is inferior in choice of forms, in the character of his heads, and in correctness of drawing. Not seldom he sins against good taste, and in some of his humorous pieces the coarseness is only atoned for by the animation. Of these last he seems in some cases to have painted several replicas. He employed his pencil also in biblical, mythological, historical and allegorical subjects, and is well-known as a portrait painter. He also etched some plates.

Jordaens died of the mysterious Antwerp disease ('zweetziekte' or 'polderkoorts' in Dutch) in October of 1678, which -on the same day- also killed his unmarried daughter Elizabeth, who lived with him. Their bodies were buried together under one tombstone in the Protestant cemetery at Putte, a village just north of the Dutch border, where his wife Catharina had been put to rest earlier. The Protestant religion was forbidden in Antwerp, which at the time was still Spanish-occupied territory.

A monument was erected in Putte in 1877, dedicated to and containing the tombstones of Jordaens and two of his pupils, van Pape and Stalbemt. It stands on the location of the little Protestant church and cemetery, both of which were demolished years earlier.

(See the elaborate work on the painter, by Max Rooses (1908).)