Bulletin 13, 1969

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Reflections on the Jordaens Exhibition

by Michael Jaffe

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Items Exhibited

205 The physical description is incomplete. Inscribed recto: J. Jordaens, ink, not by the hand of the artist; verso: Jacob Jordaens-projet de décoration intérieure pour la maison du peintre aujourd'hui détruite - S. R., pencil (these initials unidentified). 

Add PROV. H. S. Reitlinger sale, London (Sotheby's), 23 June 1954, No. 768, bought for the National Gallery of Canada. 

Add to LIT.: Popham-Fenwick, No. 144.

213 Mrs. Z. Filipczak first pointed out to me that Jordaens used studies from this sheet when he came to design the Kassel TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS [No. 96]. The way in which the hands support the round basket is followed rather closely for the hands of the young countrywoman with the basket of grapes; and the hand clasping the large ring-shaped object is taken almost literally for the hand of the negro with the tambourine. The other isolated hand on the Paris sheet and the hand which paddles in the serving woman's bosom were not used, however, for the Kassel picture. Clearly the Paris sheet was in stock before that was conceived; and it may date from the first rather than the second half of the 1640s, as its position in the catalogue implies.

214 Add to LIT.: Antwerp / Rotterdam 1966-67, p. 94 (under No. 75), as "door vreemde Rand." 

This adverse opinion of d'Rulst may not convince those who saw this sparkling autograph in the context of the Ottawa exhibition.

220 Physical description: after squared for enlargement add in black chalk.

226 The drawing had been exhibited: Brussels 1926
No. 16; Brussels, Cent Vingt Dessins, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Sept. / Nov. 1967 (Mlle E. De Wilde classes the Brunswick painting incorrectly as "un tableau d'atelier"). The subject correctly should be "The Earthly Trinity" (cf: J. B. Knipping, De Iconografie van de Contra-Reformatie in de Nederlanden, Hilversum, 1939, I, pp. 156-157, Afb. 104). Held (32) rightly calls attention to the discussion of this theme by E. Mâle, L'art religieux après le Concile de Trente, Paris, 1951, pp. 312-313, fig. 185.

245 In the collection of Professor T. Heinrich, Toronto, is a drawing in chalks (fig. 3) which evidently records a missing study by Jordaens for the figure of the young man with the clay pipe, introduced to enliven the composition at a stage between the British Museum drawing and the skokloster painting [NO. 105].
 
247/248 The same pale violet wash appears on both drawings, which are unmistakably by the same hand at approximately the same time.

249 See entry for hors catalogue B, below. This Besançon drawing should have been dated post-1653, probably c. 1660, but in any case before 25 April 1662.

250 The artist's inscription reads Cleopatra laet haer stechen va(n) Een Slange om niet Te vallen in handen va(n) Pompeius, according to Held. (33) Steeken is another reading for stechen. 

Under Prov.: for E. Peter Jones, Greenbank, Chester, read With Stephen Spector, NewYork.

258 Add to LIT.: Marian C. Donnelly, AQ, Winter 1959,
pp. 356-361, fig. 2. 

The author draws attention to the play of Calvin's associate, Théodore de Bèze, Abraham sacrifiant, in which Satan appears in the guise of a monk, as does the central figure here.

262 The scribe seated in the foreground with the pile of books seems a more or less conscious reflection of the St. Andrew introduced by Raphael at an advanced stage in the planning of THE TRANSFIGURATION.

273 As the English translation makes clear, the Flemish inscription includes 2000 Croonen. Waer op Cavarra antwoorden. Held (34) points also to two other regrettable oversights in proof correction: huiswrou for huysvrouw(e), and our for om. There is also a third: to for te.

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