Jacob Jordaens Antwerp 1593 - 1678

For all the extraordinary achievements of Rubens in the medium of painting, no other 17th-century Flemish artist used colour in his figural and compositional drawings as effectively as Jacob Jordaens.  Some of these drawings were made as studies for tapestries or paintings, but others seem to have been made as independent works in their own right. In the present drawing, Jordaens seems to have been exploring not only the composition itself but also where it should end.  Since he did not resolve the latter very neatly, it seems reasonable to conclude that the drawing was conceived as a preparatory study for some other work, although no such related work is known.  

As regards both composition and subject, this lively work can be compared to a drawing by Jordaens of Nymphs, Satyrs and Children, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see R.-A. d'Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, London 1974, vol. III, cat. no. 159).  It also shares similar motifs with a Susanna and the Elders in the Louvre (see R.-A. d'Hulst, op.cit., vol. IV, cat. no. 409).  Previously unpublished, it is a significant, as well as attractive, addition to the corpus of known mythological drawings by the artist.