Beskrivning: Lukasevangeliet berättar hur ängeln uppenbarar sig för herdarna med glädjebudskapet att Frälsaren är född. De beger sig till Betlehem för att beskåda Jesusbarnet. Utöver den heliga familjen och herdarna inkluderar scenen även herdinnor, som enligt traditionen medförde gåvor av ägg och mjölk. Figurernas vardagsnära realism och ljussättningen med bländande dagsljus och djupa skuggor inspirerades måhända av mötet med Caravaggios Rosenkransmadonna i Antwerpens dominikanerkyrka.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 103: 

Technical notes: The painting’s support is an oak
panel (± 0.4–0.6 cm thick) constructed of three vertical,
butt-joined, radial boards of approximately equal width
with a vertical grain. Bevelling occurs along the top and,
partially, the bottom edges. The dimensions are approximately
those of the nearly identical autograph version of
the composition at The Hague (Mauritshuis, inv. no.
937, oil on oak, 125.0 x 95.7 cm). The panel has been
thinned and a cradle attached to the verso. All four corners
are slightly damaged on the recto. Two vertical
cracks in the support extending from the top edge,
respectively 18 cm and 9 cm long, have been repaired
and reinforced on the verso with pieces of wood. Dendrochronological
examination and analysis have determined
a felling date for the tree between c. 1611 and
1621. The wood originates from the Baltic region.

The panel was prepared with a lower thick, smooth,
white ground layer containing mostly chalk, applied with
a broad bristle brush, which completely hides the wood
grain of the support. This was covered by a very thin,
semi-transparent, “streaky” light grey imprimatura, visible
under the microscope only in those areas of the faces
of Mary and the Child that are in shadow. Infrared
reflectography partially revealed an extensive dark underdrawing
in a dry medium, probably black chalk, visible as
fine contour lines in the faces, bodies and draperies of
the figures (in the face and straw hat of the woman on
the left; the face, strands of hair, hands and right elbow
of the shepherd on the left; the Virgin’s face; the Child’s
face and the folds of his swaddling cloth; Joseph’s face;
and the hair of the shepherd on the right). Multiple
drawn lines were used in the Child’s swaddling cloth to
indicate shading in the deepest folds. Although several of
the heads (those of Joseph, the two shepherds, the two
shepherdesses) were repeated identically in related Adoration
scenes by Jordaens (see below), including the version
at The Hague, no direct evidence of mechanical
transfer could be detected.

Paint was applied thickly and fluidly in mostly opaque
and semi-transparent layers, with vigorous brushwork and
rich impastos, which are built up almost in relief on the
surface, in the whites (the Christ Child’s swaddling cloth,
the old shepherdess’ headdress), the white and yellow
lights (on the brass jug, the straw hat of the shepherdess
on the left, the straw roof of the shed) and highlighted
areas of faces and bodies, especially the pinkish white flesh
tones of the Virgin and Christ Child. Ridges of excess
paint not absorbed by the ground layers are visible along
the contours of heads and hands. The warm orange-red
robe of the shepherd on the left was shaded with a translucent
dark red glaze. The pink of the Virgin’s robe, shaded
in grey, was applied over a grey underpaint. The white
strands of Joseph’s hair were scumbled over dark yellow
ochre, and the white and yellow ochre strands of his beard
over the medium grey of his mantle. Several significant
pentimenti occurred during the painting stage as revealed
by X-radiography: the position of Joseph’s right hand at
top centre was altered from a profile view, the thumb
moved further to the right, exposing more of the palm; the
right eye of the shepherd on the left was changed from
being fully open to half-closed, the gaze directed downward
towards the Child; the face of the shepherd on the
right was completely repainted, changed from a young
man into an adolescent. Before these compositional
changes occurred the painting corresponded, in these
details, to the version at The Hague.
The painting is in excellent condition, with very little
retouching and barely any abrasion overall. A discoloured
layer of old varnish is present. Retouching covers abrasion
and small losses of the paint and ground layers along
the edges, along the repaired vertical joins on the right
(from Joseph’s forehead down through the Virgin’s left
shoulder and the Child’s face) and left (from the old
woman’s headdress down through the brass jug), and two
vertical cracks at the top edge near centre. Scattered small
retouches in the background at the upper right, in the
vertical post of the shed, and in the figures (in red robe of
shepherd on the left, the Virgin’s blue mantle over her left
arm, Joseph’s grey robe, the green robe of the shepherd
on the right, in the face of the elderly woman at centre
left). Several thickly painted areas display a pronounced
craquelure: the Virgin’s blue mantle; the Child’s white
swaddling cloth. The painting underwent conservation
treatment in 1836, 1874, 1936 and 1963.

Provenance: Johan Gabriel Stenbock, Stockholm;
Christina Beata Lillie, Stora Sundby, 1705–1727 (inv.
1727); Johan Gabriel Sack and Eva Bielke, Stockholm,
1727–1778; (sale, Stockholm, 1778); purchased 1778 by
Gustav III; Gustav III 1792, no. 20); KM 1795, no. 69.

Exhibited: Stockholm 1945, no. 85; Stockholm 1977,
no. 87; Stockholm 2010, no. 73.

Bibliography: NM Cat. 1867, p. 34; Sander II, p. 103;
Göthe 1887, pp. 126–127; Rooses 1890, pp. 15–17, 19,
20, 29, 32, 35, 198, 236, opp. p. 14; Göthe 1893, pp.
158–159; Bredius in Kunstchronik, N.F. 17, 1905, column
33; Buschmann 1905, pp. 63–64, pl. I; Rooses 1906
(Engl. ed., 1908), pp. 15–18, 19–20, 28–29, 196, 228,
opp. p. 14; Göthe 1910, pp. 177–178; Granberg
1911–1913, I, p. 114 no. 501; Burchard 1928, p. 213;
Granberg 1929–1931, III, pp. 8, 13, 175; Held 1940, p.
29; Strömbom 1949, pp. 18, 76 no. 22; D’Hulst 1953, p.
136, fig. 25; Puyvelde 1953, pp. 30, 94, 173 n. 35, 187,
fig. 21; NM Cat. 1958, p. 102; Gerson 1961, p. 14b; Jaffé
1968, p. 365; Ottawa 1968–1969, p. 39; Martin 1970, p.
88; Müller Hofstede 1971, pp. 278 n. 248, 279; Knipping
1974, II, p. 429; D’Hulst 1982, pp. 44, 87, 89, 91, fig. 55;
Liedtke 1984, p. 122; Mauritshuis 1985, p. 220; NM Cat.
1990, p. 184; Antwerp 1993, see pp. 58–60 under no. A7,
fig. A7a; Broos 1993, see pp. 153–158 under no. 17, fig.
1; Belkin and Healy 2004, p. 190; Liedtke 2006, p. 107
The theme of this painting, the “Adoration of the
Shepherds”, taken from the account in the Gospel of
Saint Luke (2:15–16), describes how some shepherds,
having been informed by an angel of the birth of the
Saviour, arrive at the manger in Bethlehem to adore
the newborn Christ Child. In addition to Mary and
Joseph, the artist has included in the scene not only
two shepherds, but also the two shepherdesses, who,
according to tradition, brought eggs and milk as gifts
for the Child.1

Jordaens depicted the theme of the “Adoration”
repeatedly between 1615, the year he became a master,
and 1618, the date of the present painting, and then
again only from the 1640s onwards. For a long time the
present picture passed as the first of a sequence of “Adoration”
scenes by Jordaens, but Burchard (1928) and
D’Hulst (1953) have since described the painter’s early
oeuvre so thoroughly that we now know that it was preceded
by a number of Biblical works with life-size, halflength
figures.2Especially important in the present context
are the depictions of the theme in New York (The
Metropolitan Museum of Art),3 The Hague (Mauritshuis),
4 and Brunswick (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum).
5 The New York Adoration of the Shepherds,
the artist’s earliest known dated work, is signed “I. IOR”
and dated “1616”. The Adoration of the Shepherds at The
Hague, similarly inscribed “I. IOR” (on the
handle of the jug), is a nearly identical autograph version
of the present picture, while the closely related
painting in Brunswick introduces new figures
and positions. Around 1645–1650, Jordaens then painted
a full-size Adoration of the Shepherds (Paris, Musée du
Louvre),6 in which we encounter many figures and elements
from these paintings of thirty years earlier. A
drawing in London (The British Museum), later
enlarged by the artist, may initially have served as a preliminary
study for the composition in the Stockholm
and The Hague paintings.7

The predominance of “Nativity” scenes in Jordaens
oeuvre of the late 1610s surely resulted from his desire
to experiment with the different possibilities of depicting
light. In the New York Adoration, a night piece, the
principal light source, a candle in Joseph’s hand, is
identifiable as the cause of the sharp contrasts between
the bright and shadowed passages. The artist has
abandoned the bright, clear Mannerist palette with
half and broken tones characteristic of his work before
1616 and now seems more interested in using light to
mould his figures in space. In this way Jordaens adopted
the innovations of Adam Elsheimer and Caravaggio,
the two artists most associated at that time with
the phenomenon of light in art, possibly through the
intermediary of models by Rubens. Though neither
his pupil nor assistant, Jordaens seems to have had free
access to Rubens’ studio and art collection and would
thus have been acquainted with the many Caravaggesque
scenes painted by the master following his
return from Italy.8 Since Jordaens himself never visited
Italy, his only direct encounter with Caravaggio’s
painting occurred sometime after 1617, when the
Madonna of the Rosary (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches
Museum) was acquired for the Dominican church of
St. Paul at Antwerp. Perhaps it was the confrontation
with this important work that prompted Jordaens, in
his three Adoration scenes from around 1617/1618
(The Hague, Stockholm, Brunswick), to abandon the
artificial light so characteristic of his earlier depictions
in favour of a natural lighting and a more even distribution
of shade more attuned to Caravaggio’s art. In
these Adoration scenes the light comes from an invisible
source, and Jordaens used the artifice of a brass jug
as a repoussoir and reflector of light. Van Mander had
greatly admired similar effects in the night pieces of
Jacopo Bassano, whom he praised for his evocative
scenes in which “candles, torches, and burning lamps
hang, and pots and kettles receive the radiance”.9 The
Caravaggesque illumination encloses the Virgin and
Child in a seemingly very intimate space, and, along
with the closely cropped composition, brings the
viewer into the circle of figures. Müller Hofstede
(1971) observed that, while Rubens’ response to Caravaggio
was largely formal, Jordaens’ “adoption, synthesis
and intensification” of the Caravaggesque qualities
in the art of Rubens supported a “specific [kind of]
narrative expression, a special iconographic style”,
found principally in his paintings of the “Holy Family”
and such closely related subjects as the “Adoration
of the Shepherds”.10 From Caravaggio and Bassano,
Jordaens also borrowed the rustic realism of his figures.
Vlieghe described his preference for realistic settings
and “simple folk characters” as “a constant feature
of Jordaens’ [early] work”, which is “abundantly
apparent in his devotional pictures”.11While the halflength
devotional format, eminently suitable for display
in a private house, had a long-standing tradition
in Netherlandish art, the densely packed, relief-like
arrangement of figures in Jordaens’ paintings must be
considerably indebted to the half-length figure groupings
of Abraham Janssens.

Bredius (1905) and Rooses (1906) both felt that the
Stockholm painting was of inferior quality to the version
at The Hague. Gerson (1961), followed by Broos
(1993), then suggested that The Hague composition
was literally repeated by the artist in the Stockholm
panel. The closely related painting in Brunswick shows
new figures and positions: a third young shepherd has
replaced the old shepherdess, and the young shepherd
on the left now leans on the brass jug, so that we see
part of his back. In the Stockholm and Brunswick versions,
the shadows are accented more darkly and heavily
than in the painting at The Hague, especially in the
faces of the Virgin and the young shepherds. Many of
the heads were repeated identically by Jordaens in
these Adoration scenes, though in different combinations:
the bearded old man (The Hague, Stockholm),
the old woman (The Hague, Stockholm), the young
woman (The Hague, Stockholm, Brunswick), the
young man on the left (The Hague, Stockholm), the
young man on the right (Stockholm, Brunswick). This
recycling of head types implies the existence of lost
prototypes, whether drawings or oil studies, and their
comparable sizes in different paintings suggests the use
of some method of mechanical transfer, possibly by
partial cartoons. The artist seems to have used
the same model for the Virgin in the Adoration at The
Hague and for Mary Magdalene in a contemporary
work, the Temptation of Mary Magdalene at Lille (Musée
des Beaux-Arts).12 Apparently he was so pleased with
the motif of the head of the young man on the left in
his earlier New York Adoration – where it is lit from
below – that he repeated it in the Adorations at The
Hague and Stockholm, as well as the Lille Temptation.13
Broos (1993) took the development outlined above as
his starting point for establishing a chronology of the
undated works: from his Adoration of 1616 (New York)
Jordaens retained a few elements for use in a new composition
(The Hague) of c. 1617; in 1618 he repeated it
quite literally (Stockholm) while, almost contemporaneously,
creating a fourth version with a few new figures
(Brunswick). The correctness of Broos’ reconstruction
is borne out by X-ray examinations of the
Stockholm (see Technical Notes) and The Hague panels,
which shed interesting new light on the artist’s
working methods. An X-radiograph of the Stockholm
painting revealed that at an initial stage, before alterations
were carried out by the artist, several elements
corresponded exactly in the two versions: the same sitter
was apparently used as model for the young shepherd
on the right; the open gaze of the shepherd
on the left and the position of Joseph’s right hand were
initially identical in both works. Furthermore, an Xradiograph
of the panel at The Hague showed that Jordaens
enlarged Mary’s blue veil, so that it would cover a
greater part of her forehead and the head of the Christ
Child, in a manner corresponding to her veil as shown
in the Stockholm version. In the panel at The Hague, a
young man was originally painted to the upper left of
Mary’s head, as may still be seen at Brunswick, while
the old shepherdess was initially missing from the composition.
The head in profile of the shepherd, a young
man, on the right in the painting at The Hague has a
portrait-like character that goes well beyond that of
any analogous figure in the painting. This distinctive
head, subsequently changed into a more idealized boyish
type in the Stockholm replica, is so conspicuous
that one wonders if it might possibly be the portrait of
a donor, presented as a witness to a biblical event.
CF

1 See Réau 1955–1959, II, pp. 233–234.
2 Jordaens’ earliest known Adoration of the Shepherds (oil on wood, 89.2 x
111.1 cm) is a newly discovered painting of c. 1615 in an American private
collection; for which see W. Liedtke, “An early work by Jacob Jordaens
rediscovered”, The Burlington Magazine 148 (February 2006): pp.
107–108.
3 Oil on canvas (transferred from wood), 106.7 x 76.2 cm, inscribed “I. IOR
Fe/1616”, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
67.187.76; see Liedtke 1984, I, pp. 121–126, II, colour pl. IX, pl. 52; and
Antwerp 1992/1993, I, cat. no. A 7, illus.
4 Oil on wood, 125 x 95.7 cm, inscribed “I. IOR”, The Hague, Mauritshuis,
inv. no. 937; for which see Broos 1993, cat. no. 17, repr. in colour on p. 156.
5 Oil on wood, 125 x 79 cm, Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum,
inv. no. 116; see Van Puyvelde 1953, p. 94; and Brunswick 1976, cat. no.
116, fig. 24.
6 Oil on canvas, 185 x 180 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. R.F.1981-
58; see Foucart 1983, pp. 39–40, illus.
7 Black and red chalk, brown wash, watercolour and body colour, 458 x 486
mm, London, The British Museum, inv. no. Chambers Hall, Esq.,
1852.6.12.199; see Held 1933, 220; and Ottawa 1968–1969, pp. 220–221
no.261, illus.
8 See Healy in Antwerp 2004, pp. 188–190 (under no.36).
9 Van Mander 1604, fol. 32a (chapter “On Reflection, Reverberation,
Refulgence, or Radiance”), cited by Broos 1993, p. 157.
10 See Müller Hofstede 1971, pp. 278–279, cited by Liedtke 2006, p. 108.
11 Vlieghe 1998, p. 35.
12 Oil on wood, 125 x 97 cm, Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. 77 (427);
see Ottawa 1968/1969, p. 73, cat. no. 7.
13 Jordaens was certainly familiar with Adam Elsheimer’s The Mocking of
Ceres (1608), or a copy of it, since he modelled the figures of the young
shepherd on the left and Joseph holding a lit candle in his New York Adoration
of the Shepherds of 1616 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), after
those of Ceres and the old woman in this picture. The maidservant on the
left in NM 176 was similarly modelled after Ceres. Rubens owned a copy
of Elsheimer’s work, probably acquired in the mid-1610s, possibly from
the Antwerp collector, Cornelis van der Geest. See Antwerp 2004, under
no. 4 [K. Lohse Belkin].[End]

The Gospel of Luke recounts how some shepherds, informed by an angel of the birth of the Saviour, arrive at the manger in Bethlehem to joyfully adore the newborn. The scene shows the Holy Family and the shepherds, but also the legendary shepherdesses who brought gifts of eggs and milk. Jordaens’ encounter with Caravaggio’s Madonna of the Rosary in the Dominican church at Antwerp may have inspired the realism of his rustic figures, as well as strong natural lighting and deeply accented shadows.

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