ABSTRACT
The Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) visited the Dutch Republic several times. He seems to have been in The Hague on at least three occasions. In 1660, his son-in-law, resident in The Hague, bought a house in his name in the neighboring village of Voorburg. 1 Whether Jordaens ever visited nearby Delft is not known, but in the circle of connoisseurs, art dealers, and artists in that city, his work was evidently appreciated. Some Delft artists, such as Christiaen van Couwenbergh and Pieter Jansz. van Ruijven, were influenced by him. Van Ruijven – a distant cousin of Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven, the important patron of Vermeer – was actually Jordaens’ pupil in Antwerp. And at least two paintings by Jordaens were in Delft during the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The present article considers another composition associated with Jordaens in a seventeenth-century Delft collection. Relying on pictorial sources as much as on archival documents, it is meant as an addendum to Michael Montias’ magisterial Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (1982).
