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Antwerp (c. 1616).27 Nevertheless, the tronie also appears as St John the Evangelist on the left wing of Rubens’s Adoration of the Magi in Mechelen (c. 1616–19).28 In Rubens’s modello for the painting in Lille, the corpse of Christ visually merges with the white shroud, as it did in the Antwerp Descent. Through this masterly solution the viewer’s attention is focused on the centre of the drama. A deep fold in the shroud casts a sharp-edged shadow that links the stretched arm of the man on the upper left via Christ’s dead body to the leg of St John and the ladder on the lower right. In this way, a striking diagonal is created, resulting in a triangular composition. The modello already hints at the intended colour scheme of the draperies, in line with convention. The simplicity of composition and the focus on drama as expressed in the modello was abandoned in the altarpiece. These observations support the hypothesis that Jordaens actually made the first design and that Rubens adapted it in his modello, after which Jordaens put the old woman in again and got away with it. The fact that the artistic brainstorming session was resumed in a masterful Rubens modello and the existence of two model drawings by Rubens in preparation of the altarpiece do not exclude a participation by Jordaens in the process of invention. By omitting the shadowed fold in the shroud, Rubens’s powerful diagonal was interrupted. The eyes of the viewer are distracted from the tragedy by the boldly coloured draperies of the protagonists. Under his red cloak, St John is wearing an olive-green tunic. Wearing a simple yellow garment in the modello, Mary Magdalene seems rather overdressed in the altarpiece, where she is given a sumptuous attire in yellow silk and pink lining, covering a light purple-blue dress. This mother-of-pearl outfit is rather out of place and reduces the impact of the main subject of the altarpiece. The rich purple drapery and yellow turban of Nicodemus are
overly present. The reintroduction of the elderly woman on the left could be called quite unnecessary too. All these deviations from the original concept must have been decided by Jordaens, an artistic personality with a penchant for the narrative and the spectacular, lacking subtlety and avoiding empty spaces. The extras in the Lille Descent from the Cross can only be described as plump. We see a solid and capable hand that loves to paint shiny fabrics and that is not afraid of strong contrasts, vividly coloured half shadows and reflections; a painter who smoothly unites his thick paint, but who does not – unlike Rubens in these years – bother about transparent glazes.29 In my opinion, these elements point in one direction: Jordaens. Archival documents that give us information on Jacob Jordaens’s life and activities before 1620 are scarce.30 Only a handful of his earliest paintings are signed, dated or documented.31 On the whole, assuming that Jordaens was active as an independent artist from 1612 onwards, his artistic output in the second decade seems surprisingly modest. In all likelihood, our understanding of the artist’s production in those years is obscured by his share in the production of pictures that are labelled as Rubens. However, the list of these works is growing. The Flight of Lot and his Daughters from Sodom in Tokyo was added to this category by d’Hulst with good reason.32 Equally convincing is Balis’s reattribution to Jordaens of the portraits of Archduke Albert of Austria and The Infanta Isabella in
d’Hulst 1982, p. 67, fig. 36; d’Hulst, De Poorter and Vandenven 1993. In this context, a similar double use of study material in the Rubens orbit can be mentioned. It should be remarked that the man on top of the ladder in the upper right of the Descent has the same facial features as the male nude appearing in a series of model studies in Darmstadt and Düsseldorf. Difficult to attribute, these drawings reflect positions of figures in paintings by Jordaens, Vinckenborch and Rubens. See Vlieghe 1987a and my article in Brussels 2012, pp. 55–59: ‘Jordaens of geen Jordaens? Over het gebruik van modelstudies in de zeventiende eeuw.’ 27
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Or, as d’Hulst characterized Jordaens’s style: ‘de figuren zijn korter en daardoor minder sierlijk, een sterke golving verleent de omtreklijnen een dynamischer karakter, terwijl bovendien het koele en felle coloriet waarin heliotroop, lila, scherp geel en giftig groen een belangrijke rol spelen, alsmede de kordate toets …’ (d’Hulst 1982, p. 44). 30 He was baptized on 20 May 1593 in Our Lady’s Church in Antwerp. In 1607–08 he is known to have been a pupil of Adam van Noort (1562–1641). In 1615–16 he became master in the Guild of St Luke where he was registered as waterschilder (painter of watercolours on canvas or paper). On 15 May 1616 he married Catharina, the eldest daughter of his master. In 1620–21 a certain Charles du Val is registered as Jordaens’s pupil. 31 Among these, we should mention an Adoration of the Shepherds (1616, New York, Metropolitan Museum); a Crucifixion for St Paul’s Church in Antwerp, paid 150 guilders by Magdalena Lewieter in 1616–17; The Daughters of Cecrops Finding Erichthonius (1617, KMSKA); and finally an Adoration of the Shepherds (1618, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum). 32 d’Hulst 1967; d’Hulst and Vandenven 1989, no. 5 copy 2; Jaffé 1989, no. 266: 1614; Vlieghe 1993, p. 161; Nakamura 1994; Liedtke 1993; Balis 1994, p. 112. 29
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