257 - JACOB JORDAENS (1593-1678) (suiveur/ navolger/ follower)

JACOB JORDAENS (1593-1678) (suiveur/ navolger/ follower) Saint Ives, patron saint of lawyers. Oil on canvas. We see Saint Ives, protector of the poor and patron saint of lawyers, in his study. Lecturing with his index finger in the air, he addresses a group of city residents who have fallen into poverty due to usury. Several clerks observe the scene. This work is painted after Jordaens' 'Usury is a great evil, a terrible plague in the city'. It concerns a proverb that the artist depicted for a series of tapestries featuring proverbs. A cartoon for the weavers, without the clerks, is still located in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. A version on canvas (236 × 208 cm) of that is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. A smaller version (103 × 129.5 cm), including the clerks and dated by the artist to 1645, is in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. According to Nora de Poorter (cf. R.-A. D'Hulst, N. De Poorter and M. Vandeven, 'Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) Paintings and Tapestries', Antwerp, 1993, under cat. no. A69, note 28) this painting is a copy. On the other hand, Dr. MBA Joost van der Auwera attributes this work to the workshop of Jacob Jordaens in an appraisal dated 23 May 2023, with touches from the master himself in the central figure. Given the variety of opinions regarding the attribution, some caution is advised, which has been applied in the current description of this painting. We thank Brecht Vanoppen for his assistance in cataloguing this painting. Provenance: Paul Delaroff (1852–1913), Paris, 1914 [according to handed-down documentation] Auction, Brussels (Egmont Palace), 6– 7 December 1938, lot 38bis Auction, Brussels (Centre for Fine Arts), 24 May 1944, lot 27 Art dealership Arthur De Heuvel, Brussels 1951–1952 Auction, Brussels (Centre for Fine Arts), 14 June 1955, lot 115 Auction, Antwerp (Van Herck), 27–29 March 1992, lot 157 Dimensions: 87 x 120 cm (115 x 149 cm)