JULIUS S. HELD

Notes on Jacob Jordaens

E. J. K. R E Z N I C E K'S discovery of an unknown portrait drawing by Jordaens in the Ufhzi (pl. 3)1 prompts me to publish some material which will help to round out our knowledge of this Flemish master. In his text for the exhibition catalogue, Reznicek made some astute assumptions. He desig- nated 1635 as the approximate date of the drawing. He saw the connection of the Ufhzi drawing with one in the collection of Frits Lugt (pl. 4), which R.-A. d'Hulst had placed among the drawings done between 1642 and 16512. Reznicek also wondered whether the two drawings originally might not have belonged together as studies for portraits of a married Antwerp couple. Happily, all these hypotheses can be completely verified, because the only additional one, that the painted portraits seem to be lost, is baseless. The paintings, of which these drawings are the studies, are still in a private Belgian collec- tion. They have never been reproduced, but they were listed and described by Max Rooses3 as being in the collection of Mevrouw Douairiere Bosschaert du Bois of Antwerp (pls. 1 and 2). Rooses mentioned a third portrait in the same collection, representing an elderly woman, a picture he correctly recognized as belonging to the two others (pl. 5). These three paintings were also listed by L. van Puyvelde when they belonged to Baron de Borrekens in Vorselaer4. Van Puyvelde was able to give the dimensions of the paintings, and he realized that some of them had inscriptions, though his reading of them is incomplete. He also was unaware, as had been Rooses, of the identity of the models. Thanks to the kind assistance of Mlle. Eliane Havenith, I was able to study these three paintings in 1953 at Vorselaer, where I also obtained the names of the sitterS5. The three paintings are all of identical size (145 x 110 cm), and are in similar-and apparently original-frames. The man is Roger Le Witer, Groot Abnosenier of the city of Antwerp. The inscription under the caryatid at the right reads: AETATIS 44, 1635, which corresponds precisely to the date pro- posed by Dr. Reznicek. There is, however, another date in the painting. On the table at the left stands

1. DisegniFiamminghi e Olandesi, Florence, 1964,no. 73. 2. De Tekeningenvan Jakob Jordaens, Brussels, 1956, pp. 246, 371, Leuchtenberg Collection, which was with Julius Weitzner in New York fig. 116. in 1934; another, 48 x 71 inches, in the Hoblitzelle Collection in the 3. Jordaens' Leven en Werken, -Antwerp, 1906, Dallas Museum, came from the collection of the Marquis de Torretagli, pp. 52-53. Lima, Peru. The picture which Van Puyvelde lists last (coming from 4. Jordaens, -Brussels, 1953,pp. 208-209. the collection of the Duc de Trevise) and which is dated 1647, is now 5. Besides the three portraits, there is another painting by Jordaens in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore (52 x 641/4inches [fig. 16]). in the collection of Baron de Borrekens at Vorselaer. This is a Flight Next to the painting in Vorselaer, of which I have been unable to obtain into Egypt, signed and dated 1641(see L. van Puyvelde, loc, cit., p. 38.) photos, it is the best example known to me, and differs from all the It contains an interesting pentimento in the position of the right wing others in that it presents a completely changed position of the large of the angel leading the ox, and hence may well have been the first of angel; in type, pose, and drapery he closely resembles the figure of the many versions known to exist of this composition. Van Puyvelde Mercury in the so-called 'Riding Academy' in the collection of Spencer listed five other versions, one of which is also dated 1641, but is Churchill (see Miscellania Leo van Puyvelde, Brussels, 1949, p. 155.) much smaller, and, judging from the reproduction, inferior. To these In the engraving by Pontius, the figure of the large angel is omitted, and should be added a version (47 Y2x 68 ?/2inches) said to come from the in its place appears a broken idol, falling from its pedestal.

112 a small figure, forming part of a kind of collection plate. On this object we find the date A° 1623, referring to the year when Le Witer was first elected to the post of Chief Almoner. Rooses had taken this date to be the one of the painting, and hence mistakenly thought that it belonged to the period marked by Jordaens' portrait of his own family in Madrid. The young woman represents Catherine Behagel, Le Witer's wife. This canvas is inscribed AETATIS 37, and is the only one of the three pictures to carry the artist's signature: 'J. Jordaens fecit 16 ...'. (The last two figures of the date cannot be seen, but it is undoubtedly the same as her husband's, i.e., 1635, which must also be the date of the drawing in the Lugt collection.) The elderly woman is Madeleine de Cuyper, the mother of Roger Le Witer. She wears a widow's cap, and the single tulip in a carafe placed in a niche at the right is most likely a silent homage to her deceased husband. One is immediately reminded of the four tulips in a glass carafe in Rubens' painting of Justus Lipsius and his disciples in the Palazzo Pitti, which are placed in front of a bust of Seneca, symbolizing the veneration of the four scholars for the ancient poet. The same reference, probably to a departed husband, found in the portrait of Madeleine de Cuyper, but still more strongly reinforced by common vanitas associations, appears in a portrait attributed-not too convincingly-to Cornelis de Vos, in the (Pl. 6). (The seams of the skull are calligraphically elaborated into the message: 'Sum quod eris'-'I am what you will be'.)6 If the paintings, all obviously forming part of one commission, hung in the same room, Le Witer's portrait probably was placed in the center, flanked at the left by that of his mother, at the right by that of his wife. This would make a satisfying group, not only because of the obvious symmetry of the arrangement, and Madeleine de Cuyper's turn towards the center, but also because of the perspective arrangement of the painted architecture and the compositional device of marking the extreme right and extreme left with the striking forms of red curtains. In conjunction with the drawings in Florence and the Lugt collection, the Borrekens pictures permit us to examine, for the first time, how Jordaens prepared his portraits. (The two portrait drawings reproduced by d'Hulst on pp. 186 and 187, though clearly connected with two known paintings, can hardly be called sketches, since the artist treated them with picture-like finality, using colored chalks and water-color). The Lugt drawing contains a slight second sketch of Catherine Behagels' head, but otherwise both it and the drawing in Florence contain all the essential elements of the paintings. That does not mean that Jordaens did not make any changes. It is evident that he modified a great many details. Both husband and wife have rounder and heavier heads in the sketches than in the paintings. Le Witer's hair is longer and more elegantly arranged in the Borrekens canvas than in the preliminary drawing. Most striking is the grander and more spacious treatment of the background in the Le Witer painting; neither arch nor caryatid crowd him, as they had in the sketch. Despite Jordaens' efforts to lend a grand air to the portraits, any comparison with portraits by van

6. That tulips themselves may be vanitas symbols has been men- laas Tulp, New York, 1958, p. 152, note 127, who refers to a forth- tioned by William S. Heckscher, 's Ana/orny of Dr. Nico- coming study on the subject by P. J. Vinken.

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