Jordaens, Jacob

JORDAENS, JACOB. - Painter, b. in Antwerp on 19 May 1593, d. there on 18 Oct. 1678. In 1607 he entered the workshop of the painter Adam Van Noorts. His first known work is from 1617, a Crucifixion; from 1618 is the Adoration of the Shepherds in Stockholm, with autograph signature and date, as with almost all his subsequent works. It is known that in 1621 he was elected dean of the painters' guild of the city and must have been in close contact with Rubens, with whom he collaborated in the years 1634-35 on the erection of the triumphal arch for the entry into the city of Cardinal Ferdinand.

His fame increased rapidly; he kept a large workshop, and after Rubens's death he was considered the greatest painter of the southern Netherlands, so that he received numerous commissions from churches and private individuals, for which he executed large altarpieces, mythological and historical scenes, allegories, designs for carpets, tapestries and fabrics. After Rubens and Van Dyck, J. is the third great painter of the Antwerp school. In the works of his first period, such as the Adoration of the Shepherds in Stockholm, illuminated by a sharp and penetrating light, he already reveals that particular phosphorescent luminism that would be characteristic of the works of his last period (Susanna and the Elders, of 1651; Jesus among the Doctors, of 1663, now in Mainz), while the works of his maturity are profoundly influenced by Rubens's manner. In the small genre paintings, dispersed in almost all the collections of Europe, J. shows a particular taste for genre subjects, the illustration of proverbs with scenes drawn from popular life that he frequently introduces also into religious compositions.

Eugenio Battisti