ABOUT THE ARTIST:
JACOB (JACQUES) JORDAENS (1593 – 1678) 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.
Jordaens’ main artistic influences, besides Rubens and the Brueghel family, were northern Italian painters such as Jacopo Bassano, Paolo Veronese, and Caravaggio.
Jordaens died of the mysterious Antwerp disease (‘zweetziekte’ or ‘polderkoorts’ in Dutch) in October 1678, which, on the same day, also killed his unmarried daughter Elizabeth, who had lived with him. Their bodies were buried together under one tombstone in the Protestant cemetery at Putte, a village just north of the Belgium border, where his wife Catharina had been put to rest earlier.
