

Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading Flemish Baroque painter of his day. Unlike those contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their intellectual and courtly aspirations. In fact, except for a few short trips to locations in the Low Countries, he remained in Antwerp his entire life. As well as being a successful painter, he was a prominent designer of tapestries.
Like Rubens, Jordaens painted altarpieces, mythological, and allegorical scenes, and after 1640—the year Rubens died—he was the most important painter in Antwerp for large-scale commissions and the status of his patrons increased in general. However, he is best known today for his numerous large genre scenes based on proverbs in the manner of his contemporary Jan Brueghel the Elder, depicting The King Drinks and As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young. Jordaens' main artistic influences, besides Rubens and the Brueghel family, were northern Italian painters such as Jacopo Bassano, Paolo Veronese, and Caravaggio.
More Artwork by Jacob Jordaens (View all 102 Artworks)

A Merry Company (about 1644)

Study Of Heads

Portrait of Rogier Le Witer (1635)

Head of a bearded man, possibly an apostle

‘It is good candles which light the way’ (1640s)

King Candaules of Lydia Showing his Wife to Gyges (1646)

Allegory of the Poet (circa 1660)

The Holy Family with Shepherds (1616)
More Artwork by Jacob Jordaens (View all 102 Artworks)

A Merry Company (about 1644)

Study Of Heads

Portrait of Rogier Le Witer (1635)

Head of a bearded man, possibly an apostle

‘It is good candles which light the way’ (1640s)
