Pan Punished by Nymphs

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype / C. Wittop Koning, RMA, 25 september 2009

Conservation

J.A. Hesterman, 1903: canvas lined

Provenance

…; sale, Willem Six (1662-1733, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (G. Schoemaker et al.), 12 May 1734, no. 44 (‘Een dito [kapitaal en konstig stuk] het binden van Marcias, vol gewoel, van dezelve [J. Jordaans]’), fl. 170, to Gerard Bicker, Lord of Swieten (1687-1753), Amsterdam, Zoeterwoude, The Hague;¹Copy RKD. his sale, The Hague (Eyhoff), 12 April 1741, no. 195 (‘Midas onder de Sang Godinnen door J. Jordaans, hoog 2 voet 6 duim, breed 3 voet 10 duim [78.5 x 120.4 cm]’), fl. 150, to Van Olden;²Copy RKD. The Six provenance is added in a handwritten note.…; ? collection Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague;³T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk Man’: de achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard Van Heteren’, in C. Scheffer (ed.) et al., Achttiende-eeuwse kunst in de Nederlanden, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. p. 42. his son, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague, (‘Een stuk, verbeeldende Midas met de Zanggodinnen in een Landschap, door Jacques Jordaans, h. 30 d., br. 46 d. D. [78.3 x 120.1 cm]’);⁴‘Catalogus van Schilderyen, In’t Kabinet van den Heer Bewindhebber, Adriaen Leonard van Heteren in’s Hage’, in G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derzelver Pryzen Zedert een langen reeks van Jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere Plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt. Benevens een Verzamelingvan Lysten van Verscheyden nog in wezen zynde Cabinetten, 3 vols., The Hague 1752-70, II, p. 456. his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Jacques Jordaans. Paysage représentant le suplice que les neuf Muses fon épouver à Midas pour avoir préferé le chant du satyre de Marsyas et du Dieu Pan sur celui d’Apollon, toile h. 29½ l. 46 [77 x 120.1 cm]’);⁵‘Catalogue Raisonné d’une Collection de Tableaux appartenant à Monsieur A.L. Gevers, Page de Leurs Majestés le Roi et la Reine de Hollande’, s.l. 1808, transcribed in E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en Het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 145-51, esp. p. 147, no. 53. from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809, as manner of Jordaans; on loan to the Mauritshuis, The Hague, since 1948

ObjectNumber: SK-A-601

The artist

Biography

Jacques Jordaens (Antwerp 1593 - Antwerp 1678)

The long-lived, versatile and prolific figure painter Jacques Jordaens used as a Christian name the French form Jacques rather than Jacob, as has long been long credited. He made his career in his native city Antwerp. The son of a linen merchant and baptized in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk on 20 May 1593, he was apprenticed to Adam van Noort in 1607/08 and became a master in 1615/16. He married his master’s daughter, Catherina, in the latter year which also saw his earliest, extant dated work, The Adoration of the Shepherds (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

His first apprentice was registered in 1620/21; there were to be fourteen others (not including his son, who also became a painter), the last listed in 1666/67. This does not amount to the full complement of his assistants.

Much of his output consisted in conventional religious and mythological scenes, and to a lesser extent portraiture. Some of his paintings were highly original in content, not least for being executed on a large scale, as for instance his popular Satyr and the Peasant, The King Drinks and As the Old Sing so the Young Pipe.

Jordaens was much influenced by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) both in his colouring and vocabulary of forms. Indeed the two collaborated, and Jordaens was one of many Antwerp artists who worked on the decorations designed by Rubens for the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp in 1635; shortly thereafter he worked up Rubens’s designs for paintings destined for King Philip IV of Spain’s Torre de la Parada outside Madrid. Three paintings by Jordaens were listed in Rubens’s collection when he died in 1640.⁶J.M. Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector, Princeton 1989, p. 138.

Jordaens had by then won at least part of the commission awarded indirectly from King Charles I of Great Britain for a series of paintings to decorate the queen’s cabinet in the Queen’s House at Greenwich Palace, outside London. This was never completed. Jordaens had won the commission against vigorous lobbying on behalf of the declining Rubens, and after the latter’s death he was quickly recognized as the leading artist active in Antwerp.

At the end of the decade he was commissioned to take part in the decoration of the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bosch outside The Hague. The Triumph of Prince Frederik Hendrik, finished in 1652, was the largest in the cycle, measuring over seven metres in height and width. Some ten years later he contributed four works as part of the decoration of the large gallery in the Amsterdam Town Hall.

By this time Jordaens owned a substantial property in Antwerp on the Hoogstraat embellished by a fine, new baroque facade. A census of 1659 showed that he was one of 400 richest burghers of the city.

His only documented journeys outside the Spanish Netherlands were to the United Provinces; this for the first time in 1632 when accompanied by his wife and father-in-law, who was early described as a Protestant. Jordaens seems to have conformed as an ostensible Catholic until the first half of the 1650s, when he was fined for being responsible for heretical writings. His wife may always have been a secret Protestant; she was buried in 1659 in the cemetery of the Reformed community at Putte over the border in the United Provinces. Jordaens was also buried there having died in Antwerp on 18 October 1678; communion according to the Calvinist rite had been celebrated intermittently in his house for some four years.

Jordaens’s extant corpus of paintings and drawings is large. He also made designs for tapestries. Apart from his own self-portraits, his likeness by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) for his Iconography was engraved by Pieter de Jode I or II.⁷S. Turner and C. Depauw, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Anthony van Dyck, 7 vols., Rotterdam 2002, II, 2002, no. 71.

REFERENCES
R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, pp. 7-21

Entry

The attribution to Jacob Jordaens of Pan Punished by Nymphs has not been doubted (except in the Rijksmuseum’s inventory book); the date of execution is now generally placed circa 1640,⁸M. Rooses, Jordaens: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris/Amsterdam/ Jordaens’ Leven en Werken, Antwerp 1906, pp. 157-58, proposed c. 1650; L. van Puyvelde, Jordaens, Paris/Brussels 1953, pp. 114-15, c. 1625; R.A. d’Hulst, Jacob Jordaens, translated by P.S. Falla, New York 1982, pp. 174, 176 and fig. 147, c. 1640; as did De Poorter in R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A59. which agrees with the likely date of the recto of a sheet, whose verso was used in preparation for the present work (see below).

In 1987 Wyss⁹E. Wyss, ‘An Unexpected Classical Source for Jacob Jordaens’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 5 (1987), pp. 29-35. argued persuasively that the subject is not, as was previously assumed, Marsyas punished by the Muses on the orders of Apollo as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,¹⁰Ovid, Metamorphoses, with an English translation by F. Justus Miller, revised by G.P. Goold, 2 vols., Cambridge (Mass.)/London 1994 (ed. princ. 1916), I, VI:382-391. but Pan punished by nymphs, a story told in the Imagines by Philostratus the Elder. This could have been known to Jordaens through Blaise de Vigenère’s (1547-1596) French translation perhaps in its 1629 edition, one of eight published between 1578 and 1637.¹¹Philostrate les images ou tableaux de platte-peinture traduction et commentaire de Blaise de Vigenère, ed. and translated by F. Graziani, 2 vols., Paris 1995, II, p. 610. The nymphs are punishing Pan for his boorish dancing, having captured him as he slept after the chase: ‘… he is extremely angry because the nymphs have fallen upon him and tied his hands behind his back … His beard which he values so highly has been cut off with little knives.’¹²Wyss’s translation from the French, in E. Wyss, ‘An Unexpected Classical Source for Jacob Jordaens’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 5 (1987), pp. 29-35, esp. p. 31; see also Philostratus, The Elder, The Younger, Imagines, translated by A. Fairbanks, London/Cambridge (Mass.) 1969, pp. 177-78. Philostratus distinguished between the Naiads ‘shaking drops of water from their beautiful tresses’ and the ‘rustic pastoral nymphs’. This Jordaens may have followed by placing them in the two distinct groupings, with four figures by the pool on the left intended for the Naiads.¹³De Poorter in R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, under no. A59. Jordaens initially gave a gloss to the text by showing Pan in a drunken sleep; he inscribed the sheet on which he first sketched ideas for the composition: ‘Drunken Pan sleeps … the nymphs cut … beard’ (Pan droncken slape … de nimphen scheren …baerd).¹⁴De Poorter in R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, under no. A59, who gives a fuller reading than that provided by R.A. d’Hulst, ‘Jordaens Drawings: Supplement I’, Master Drawings 48 (1980), pp. 360-70, esp. p. 365, under no. 175a. In the painting Jordaens introduced Apollo to direct the scene; this god, Pan’s old adversary, does not appear in Philostratus’s account.

Jordaens rapidly sketched his first ideas for the painting on this sheet which he had folded in two; the recto showed ‘a facade with a portico and loggia’ which D’Hulst associated with Jordaens’s building of a new house in Antwerp, the facade of which is dated 1641.¹⁵R.A. d’Hulst, ‘Jordaens Drawings: Supplement I’, Master Drawings 48 (1980), pp. 360-70, esp. p. 365, under no. 175a and pl. 23; the verso was first associated with the Rijksmuseum picture by Wyss, in E. Wyss, ‘An Unexpected Classical Source for Jacob Jordaens’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 5 (1987), pp. 29-35, esp. pp. 32-33. His first idea for the Pan composition was to show the god asleep on the ground, with a nymph bending over him to hold his head; other naked companions attend to the left. He then reversed the sheet, and depicted Pan, facing right, seated on the ground with his hands tied behind his back as his bearded head is pulled back by a seated nymph behind him. Her fellows are gathered about, one in a pose later used in the painting for the standing nymph in the centre of the group on the left. It was this, second consideration of the story that Jordaens inscribed with the partially legible commentary, which in fact is more apposite for his first idea.

Two cosmetic alterations to drapery (one – revealing – to the seated nymph in the centre middle ground, the other to that on the legs of the nymph cutting Pan’s beard), and the suppression of a nymph half-length beneath Apollo shows Jordaens’s spontaneous attitude to his predetermined plan. The composition is evidence of his inventive powers; but influential may have been Rubens’s near contemporary Nymphs and Satyrs reworked circa 1638 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) which was retained and sold after his death to King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665).¹⁶K. de Clippel, ‘Rubens’s ‘Nymphs and Satyrs’ in the Prado: Observations on its Genesis and Meaning’, The Burlington Magazine 149 (2007), pp. 76-81. That Jordaens had access to Rubens’s studio during the execution of the Torre de la Parada commission in which he participated circa 1637¹⁷Last discussed by De Poorter in R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, under no. A.53. is likely, and the same would have occurred after Rubens’s death when he completed paintings at the request of Rubens’s executors.¹⁸R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, p. 11, under ‘Between 30 May 1640 and 24 June 1641’. Thus while the pose of the nymph cutting Pan’s beard recalls that of Adastrea in his Infant Jupiter Fed by the Goat Amalthea (Musée du Louvre),¹⁹R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A45. the disposition of her legs may have been suggested by that of the nymph in the centre of the Rubens (whose pose was derived from the antique).²⁰K. de Clippel, ‘Rubens’s ‘Nymphs and Satyrs’ in the Prado: Observations on its Genesis and Meaning’, The Burlington Magazine 149 (2007), pp. 76-81, esp. p. 79 and note 12, pp. 78-79 and fig. 6. Jordaens reworked the pose again for the Adastrea in the largely destroyed Infant Jupiter Fed by the Goat Amalthea, known by the copy at Kassel, see B. Schnackenburg, Gesamtkatalog Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Kassel, 2 vols., Kassel 1996, I, p. 163, no. GK104. Other connections are the seated nymph seen from the back and the pointing nymph in the Jordaens and the seated nymph on the left in the Rubens and right in the Jordaens, whose raised right arm may ultimately derive from the Venus in Raphael’s Venus with Juno and Ceres in the Loggia di Psiche at the Villa Farnesina, Rome.²¹Engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, see W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York 1978-, XXVII, p. 21, no. 327.

Some other poses also connect with those previously devised by Jordaens. The figure of Apollo is repeated with differences in the drapery in his drawing of the Contest of Apollo and Pan in the British Museum.²²E. Wyss, ‘An Unexpected Classical Source for Jacob Jordaens’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 5 (1987), pp. 29-35, esp. p. 35; for the drawing in the British Museum, inv. no. 1910-10-13-9, see R.A. d’Hulst, Jacob Jordaens, translated by P.S. Falla, New York 1982, fig. 145. The nymph beside Apollo, seated by the tree, is repeated but in full length as Diana in the composite drawing of Diana and Callisto in the Albertina, Vienna.²³R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, I, p. 322, no. A246 and III, fig. 261, where dated c. 1645-50. The nymph holding drapery aloft on the left is similar in pose to that on the left in a contemporary Diana and Callisto²⁴First observed by L. van Puyvelde, Jordaens, Paris/Brussels 1953, p. 115; illustrated in R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, fig. A59b. (private collection); this may have been inspired by the nymph reaching for fruit on the right in the Rubens Nymphs and Satyrs. The nymph beside her is very similar to that in the centre of Jordaens’s Brussels Homage to Pomona.²⁵Illustrated in R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, fig. A4b.

It has been suggested that the Diana and Callisto, mentioned above, and the Pan Punished by Nymphs were painted as pendants,²⁶Most recently by Wyss in E. Wyss, ‘An Unexpected Classical Source for Jacob Jordaens’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 5 (1987), pp. 29-35, esp. p. 33 and note 17. a view rejected by Broos and De Poorter.

Broos speculates that Jordaens may have been provided with Vigenère’s translation of Philostratus by his patron, perhaps a learned, Amsterdam patrician.²⁷Broos in B.P.J. Broos, Intimacies and Intrigues: History Painting in the Mauritshuis, Ghent/The Hague 1993, p. 35, elaborating a suggestion made by Wyss in E. Wyss, ‘An Unexpected Classical Source for Jacob Jordaens’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 5 (1987), pp. 29-35, esp. p. 33. But as McGrath suggests, Rubens could just as well have prompted Jordaens in the direction of Vigenère’s translation; he could read French²⁸Her suggestion made to the compiler; E. McGrath, Jordaens, Psyche and the Abbot: Myth, Decorum and Italian Manners in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp, Groningen 2009, pp. 301-02, note 2. and was obviously well versed in classical mythology.²⁹E. McGrath, Jordaens, Psyche and the Abbot: Myth, Decorum and Italian Manners in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp, Groningen 2009, pp. 314-19.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A59; B.P.J. Broos, Intimacies & Intrigues: History Painting in the Mauritshuis, Ghent/The Hague 1993, no. 18

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 39, no. 163 (as The Punishment of Marsyas by the Muses followed in all subsequent museum catalogues); 1903, p. 144, no. 1317; 1905, p. 178, no. 1317; 1918, p. 144, no. 1317; 1934, p. 149, no. 1317; 1976, p. 309, no. A 601

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Jacques Jordaens, Pan Punished by Nymphs, c. 1640', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6945

(accessed 11 May 2025 17:26:12).