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Video: How 400 years later the painting "The Holy Family" by Flemish Jacob Jordaens was identified
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Jacob Jordaens is a leading Flemish artist who worked in the workshop of Rubens himself. He is known for amazing religious stories. In the work of Jordaens, a whole series of works dedicated to the Holy Family stands out. There are about 10 plot variations! And in December, researchers managed to find another "Holy Family".
About the artist
Jacob Jordaens is a leading Flemish painter of the Baroque era. In the same period, such iconic painters as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck worked with him. The famous art historian Konstantin Pion wrote that Van Dyck and Jordaens quite possibly worked together in Rubens' studio.
In 1615, Jordaens was admitted to the Guild of Artists in Antwerp as an independent master, and his first known works date from this decade. They include two religious compositions with scenes from the childhood of Christ. One of them from 1616 is kept in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the other from 1618 is in the National Museum in Stockholm.
Along with his colleagues, Jacob Jordaens was one of the great Flemish painters of the 17th century, and later, after the death of Rubens in 1640, became the leading painter of Antwerp. The artist also studied with Rubens' mentor, Adam van Noort. Throughout his long and varied career, Jordaens created mythological, religious, historical and genre paintings, as well as portraits and tapestries. The figures in his works are devoid of idealism.
Following Rubens' lead, Jordaens used vibrant colors, rich textures, full figures with lustrous skin tones, and a skillful combination of reflected light and partial shade to create a dramatic yet intimate scene.
Working in Antwerp, the commercial center of the Spanish Netherlands, Jordaens prepared paintings for foreign customers (mainly religious images). His earthly incarnation of religious subjects influenced such a Dutch master as Hals. Jordaens' work was admired by Vermeer himself. Despite the fact that Jordaens was famous for his Catholic religious images, the body of the artist was transported after his death to the Dutch Republic for Protestant burials.
St Rodney's Plots
Plots related to the Holy Family are one of Jordaens's favorites. Jacob Jordaens painted several versions of this scene with the participation of saints and an angel. One of the most famous is the work The Holy Family, which the artist painted in 1614-1618.
On this canvas, Jordaens compactly arranged a group of figures in the foreground. These figures take up most of the scenic space, leaving little room for the background. The sacred character of the composition is primarily indicated by the presence of an angel who gracefully holds out a bunch of grapes to the Christ child. With the second hand, the angel embraces Saint Joachim, the father of Mary in the apocryphal Gospel of James. Its wing embraces and protects the holy family.
In this painting, the Virgin Mary sits in the center of the composition, holds the baby Christ and looks directly at the viewer. The rustic wicker chair is also present in other works of the artist. Christ has a beautiful wreath of roses and other flowers on his head.
A palette with accents of red, white and blue is typical of Jordaens' work. It illuminates the main points with amazing and wonderful light falling from the left. The symbolism of grapes is very interesting. The bunch of fruit is an attribute of Christ himself. It is enough to remember his words from the scriptures: "I am the vine, and you are the branches." Thus, the branches of the grape fruit are the disciple of Christ, and the vine itself is the wine and bread of the sacrament (the flesh and blood of Jesus). And what is in the hand of the Christ Child? Beads. In Orthodoxy, rosary is one of the most famous attributes of faith, with which it is easier to pray.
There is another version of the Sagrada Familia of Jordaens, which was recently surprisingly found in Brussels.
Found masterpiece of Jordaens
A truly significant event in the art world took place in December. The work, which hung for many years in the municipal hall of one of the buildings of Brussels, turned out to be an original painting by the Flemish master Jordaens. The canvas was painted by Jordaens in the years 1617-1618 at the age of 25. The canvas is the result of the early period of Jordaens's work, when he focused on mythological and religious subjects.
The exploratory analysis included dendrochronology (dating of works on the wood panels on which they are written). According to this study, specialists were able to determine that The Holy Family is the oldest known version of the plot by Jordaens, written at the beginning of the 17th century.
The amazing discovery was made by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in collaboration with international experts in the framework of the inventory of cultural property.
The Flemish artist used a similar composition as in previous versions of the Sagrada Familia (other works are kept in the Metropolitan Museum, the Hermitage and Munich's Alte Pinakothek). This canvas depicts the main characters of the Family: the Infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the mother of the Virgin Mary, St. Anna, and, probably, the baby St. John the Baptist. A cartouche with the inscription "If the root is holy, then the branches" (from the epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans) was added in the second stage of the work. The canvas is planned to be restored, and at the end of 2021 it will be exhibited at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium.
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