1041 - Jacob Jordaens

Jacob Jordaens Holy Family with St. Anne Oil on panel. 49 x 37.5 cm. Provenance Private collection Vienna. – Private Collection, Bavaria. This charming small panel painting stands at the beginning of Jacob Jordaens’ career. It must have been painted before 1617, as the very carefully crafted oak panel does not yet bear any of the Antwerp marks that were later required. In 1615, at only 22, Jordaens became a free master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. At that point he employed no assistants or pupils. He had previously spent eight years training with Adam van Noort, whose daughter Catharina he married on 15 May 1616. In the following years he began his rapid rise to become one of the most important Flemish Baroque painters, alongside Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. This previously unknown work by Jordaens is directly related to a large painting of the same subject in the Detroit Institute of Arts (fig. 1, inv. no. 46.300). The figures of Mary, Anne, Joseph and Jesus appear in strong colors and are comparable, in brushwork and composition, to other depictions of the Holy Family from the artist’s early period between 1615 and 1618. Joost Vander Auwera pointed out in correspondence that the present painting is not a preliminary study for the large Detroit painting (114.4 x 95.3 cm). Rather, it is painted in the smaller standard Antwerp format known as the 'stooter' or 'three-groschen format', whereas the Detroit picture corresponds to the larger Antwerp '26-groschen format' and was intended for a different clientele. Vander Auwera, who has studied Jordaens’ early work extensively, dates both versions to around 1615, the year in which an 'Adoration of the Shepherds' in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh was probably also painted (cf. Vander Auwera, op. cit., p. 370, fig. 4). The somewhat more Baroque and fluid manner of painting in the present work, however, is already more progressive, although the skin tones of the figures still follow the older tradition. This was before Jordaens, as an independent master, worked in Rubens’ studio around 1617 (cf. Vander Auwera, op. cit., p. 377). We thank Dr Joost Vander Auwera, Brussels, for confirming the authenticity on the basis of digital photographs and for his support in cataloguing this lot. Literature mentioned: Joost Vander Auwera: The Young Jordaens, in: The Burlington Magazine, April 2023, pp. 366-77. For comparative illustrations, see the printed catalogue as well as the PDF version.