Saturday, March 11, 2017

Jacob Jordaens of Antwerp, 17th century


Jacob Jordaens
Portrait of Magdalena de Cuyper,
mother of Rogier Le Witer

ca. 1635-36
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Portrait of Rogier Le Witer,
Grand Almoner of Antwerp

1635
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Portrait of Catharine Behaghel,
wife of Rogier Le Witer

1635
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Miracle of the obol in the mouth of the fish
ca. 1630-45
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"Every picture consisting of many figures must needs have some historical part in it, seeing it is but a dull and unprofitable thing when many schemes are heaped up together without either sense or learning: it is ever requisite that the very figures which are represented in the worke should teach us by a speechlesse discourse what connexion there is in them; but because in every historicall relation the things that are a doing are ever most remarkable, so is it that an understanding and warie Artificer doth ever assigne the principall place unto the principall figures which have the chiefest hand in the represented action. "We are ever to beginne with what is chiefe," sayth Quintilian, "neither doth any man, that is to make a picture or statue, take his beginning at the feet." As for the other circumstances, he fitteth them afterwards unto severall places, representing them a farre off in smaller figures, and sometimes also involving them and shutting them up as it were in a certaine kinde of mist: "The Painter hath shed a mist about the other things," sayth Philostratus, "that they might rather resemble things alreadie done, than things that are a doing."

– from Book Three (chapter five) of The Painting of the Ancients by Franciscus Junius, first published in English in 1638  edited by Keith Aldrich, Philipp Fehl and Raina Fel for University of California Press, 1991

Jacob Jordaens
Marsyas ill-treated by the Muses
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Meeting of Odysseus and Nausicaa
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Carrying the Cross
1657
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum. Amstserdam

Jacob Jordaens
Entombment
ca. 1660-69
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Justice seated between Faith and Love
ca. 1643-47
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacob Jordaens
Infant Jupiter suckled by the Goat Amalthea
ca. 1640
wash drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jacob Jordaens
Equestrian statue under arch
before 1678
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Saint Petersburg

Jacob Jordaens
Armorial design for the Van der Linden family
ca. 1630-35
wash drawing
Rijksmuseum

Jacob Jordaens
Fable of the Satyr and the Peasant
(as engraved by Jacob Neefs)
1680
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Johann Liss
Fable of the Satyr and the Peasant
ca. 1623-26
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

"The unusual subject of this painting comes from one of Aesop's fables. In his Man and the Satyr, he related how a demigod helped a peasant who was lost on a wintry day. When the mortal put his chilled fingers to his mouth to breathe warmth onto them, the immortal satyr was astonished. Later, in thanks for the satyr's guidance, the peasant invited  him to eat. The soup being hot, the man blew on his spoon to cool it. Johann Liss portrayed the tale's climax when the satyr jumps up in disgust, proclaiming, 'From this moment I renounce your friendship, for I will have nothing to do with one who blows hot and cold with the same breath' – the moral being that all humans are hypocrites because they inconsistently blow hot and cold."

"Johann Liss was among the initiators of the dynamic baoque style of the 1600s. The sonorous color scheme shows his knowledge of past Venetian masters such as Titian and Veronese, while the dramatic conflict of light and shadow reveals an acquaintance with the spotlighting which Caravaggio concurrently employed in Rome. But the main influences here are the energized movement and robust figure types derived from the contemporary Antwerp geniuses, Jacob Jordaens and Peter Paul Rubens."

 curator's notes from the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC