Jordaens, Jacob

(1593-1678)

   After the death of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens became the leading painter of Flanders. But unlike his predecessors, he was never a court painter, instead catering to bourgeois customers. Like Rubens, Jordaens trained with Adam van Noort, whose daughter he married. He spent most of his life in Antwerp, save for short visits to Southern and Northern Netherlands. Though the influence of Rubens is clearly seen in his works, particularly in the loose brushwork and the monumentality and energy of his scenes, he differs from the older master in that his figures are vulgar peasant types with exaggerated rosy cheeks and saggy flesh highlighted with blue-gray tones. Examples of his paintings are the Satyr and Peasants (c. 1620; Munich, Alte Pinakothek), the Allegory of Fertility (c. 1622; Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts), Pan and Syrinx (c. 1625; Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts), the Four Evangelists (c. 1625; Louvre, Paris), and the Martyrdom of St. Apollonia (1628; Antwerp, Augustinian Church). Jordaens' most important work is the Triumph of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik (1652), commissioned by Frederik's wife, Amalia van Solms, for the Oranjezaal at the Huis ten Bosch in The Hague to commemorate the deeds of her deceased husband.