Jacob Jordaens (Antwerp 1593-1678)

Although unrelated to any finished painting by Jordaens, this drawing was probably conceived as a compositional sketch for a painting from the 1650s, when the artist, after the deaths of both Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, had become the leading figure of the Flemish school. Among stylistically comparable works, a sheet in the printroom of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, can be cited (R.-A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, Brussels, 1974, II, no. A338, IV, fig. 355). In composition, the influence of Paolo Veronese’s famous painting of the same subject (taken from Matthew 8:5-13), now at the Prado, can be recognized; Jordaens could have known it through one of numerous existing replicas (T. Pignatti and F. Pedrocco, Veronese, I, Milan, 1995, no. 186 ill.).