Jacob Jordaens

Among the three most renowned Flemish Baroque painters—Rubens, Van Dyck and Joardens—Jacques Joardens (1593–1678), also known as Jacob Jordaens, is undoubtedly the least studied. Yet the image of Joardens as a poor man’s Rubens obscures the better part of his varied oeuvre. This book elucidates the more erudite side of Joardens’ production by zeroing in on a single theme, "The Allegory of Fertility," principal versions of which are held in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels and the Wallace Collection in London. It examines these late Renaissance, early Baroque canvases, exploring the relationship between the two paintings and their genesis. Illustrated with the paintings themselves, in addition to preliminary drawings, prints, X-rays, paint-layer analyses and digital analysis of the canvas weave, the publication reveals an artist who demonstrated his multifaceted and radical creativity through variations on a single theme.