Jacob Jordaens

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Jacob Jordaens

DatesBiographical dates: 1593 - 1678 dead: dead 1678 born: born 1593

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BiographyBiography: Painter of portraits, historical and religious subjects, tapestry designer, draughtsman and etcher. The eldest child of a wealthy cloth merchant, Jacob Jordaens was baptized in Antwerp on May 20, 1593. In 1607, at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to the Mannerist history painter Adam van Noort. In 1615, he joined the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke as a “waterscilder [sic]”, or painter in watercolours on canvas or paper, at the time a common surrogate for the costly production of tapestries, and the medium in which tapestries were usually designed. On May 16, 1616, he married Van Noort’s daughter, Catharina. Jordaens’ first dated work, the New York Adoration of the Shepherds (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), is of the same year, but earlier paintings are known. His daughters Elizabeth and Anna Catharina were born in 1617 and 1629; his only son, Jacob II, was born in 1625 and became a minor painter. Jordaens was elected Dean of the painters’ guild in 1621 and served for one year. He accepted the first two of his many pupils from 1620 to 1622. A great number of pictures, including commissions from churches and many of his finest works, date from about 1618 through the 1630s. Jordaens collaborated with Anthony van Dyck and, especially, with Peter Paul Rubens. The three painters were engaged in 1628 to paint an altarpiece for the Augustinian Church in Antwerp. In 1634–1635, he worked under Rubens’ direction on the decorations for the Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria into Antwerp, and, in 1637–1638, he assisted Rubens with the decorations for the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV’s hunting lodge outside Madrid. During this period Jordaens ran a busy workshop and his success is indicated by the construction of an elegant house on the Hoogstraat in Antwerp (c. 1640). He received several prestigious royal commissions, including a series of paintings illustrating the History of Psyche commissioned by King Charles I of England for the Queen’s House, Greenwich (1639–1641), thirtyfive large paintings commissioned by Queen Christina of Sweden for the royal castle at Uppsala (1648), and decorations for the Oranjezaal at the Huis ten Bosch for the widowed Princess of Orange, Amalia van Solms (1649–1652). Originally a Catholic, Jordaens became a member of the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church in his old age (c. 1656) and was buried in the Protestant cemetary at Putte, just north of the Dutch border. Jordaens is invariably described as the third greatest Flemish painter of the 17th century, and, following the deaths of Rubens (1640) and Van Dyck (1641) he became the leading painter in the southern Netherlands. His style is characterized by its lack of idealistic content and its earthy figure types. His best work is assertively Flemish in style and often personal in its interpretation of subject. Unlike almost every major Flemish artist, Jordaens never went to Italy. He admired Titian, Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Adam Elsheimer and Caravaggio, but his early transition from Mannerism to a Caravaggesque and then a classisistic style was modeled mostly on Rubens, who continued to influence Jordaens for at least two decades. Jordaens’ debt, however, was limited to compositional ideas, the adaptation of certain poses, and some qualities of execution. He was remarkably independent in the use of light, the choice of colour, and the undulating rhythm of his line, and direct observation was important for the characterization of his figures. A rugged, sometimes coarse, realism is most apparent in Jordaens’ portraits and ribald genre scenes, but also lends conviction to his religious pictures. Jordaens made liberal use of workshop assistants.

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