Jacques Jordaens, Jacques Jordaens (workshop of)

A Ferry Departs as St Peter Finds a Coin in the Mouth of a Fish

c. 1621 - c. 1650

Inscriptions

  • signature, bottom right:J·JOR·fe

Scientific examination and reports

  • X-radiography: Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, no. X442, 10 maart 2002
  • technical report: J. Verhave, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 19 februari 2008

Conservation

  • J. Verhave, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 2008: cleaned, retouched, revarnished (advised by W. de Ridder, RMA)

Provenance

…; ? collection Maria de Reus, living outside Amsterdam, 30 April 1695, to be sold privately or at auction by Jan Wijncoop (‘Jordaens, Een stuck zijnde een overvaert’);1List of pictures, with a deposition made by the husband of Maria de Reus, Adriaen Le Febre, archival document N-284, GPI, from the GAA, NAA 4384 (film 4378), fols. 616v-617v; first related to the Amsterdam picture in the unpublished Research Report for the External Advisory Board, meeting at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 15 February 2008, p. 7, with corrections offered at the meeting itself, unpublished transcript; both documents kindly made available to the compiler.…; ? one of a group of pictures (including SK-C-446, 447, 453) in the collection of the Oude-Zijdshuis, Amsterdam, transferred to the Nieuwe-Zijdshuis, Amsterdam; from there transferred to the Werkhuis, 1 June 1873;2Label numbered ‘4’ on reverse of the frame. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 1885; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, since 2002

ObjectNumber: SK-C-439

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

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 1640.3J.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.4S. 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 wax-resin lined support of this painting is made up of seven pieces of canvas.5The make-up of the support was published by J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, fig. 1. The two inner, horizontally aligned pieces measure (from the left): approx. 61.9 x 49.1-55.8 cm and approx. 61.9-60.9 x 121.5 cm; at the top are two horizontally aligned pieces (from the left): approx. 33 x 22.1-23.5 and 33-34.1 x 150.1 cm; at the bottom are two pieces, similarly aligned (from the left): approx. 22.5 x 49 cm and 22.5-22.6 x 121.2 cm. At the left is a vertically placed piece: approx. 117.4 x 26.3 cm. There are remains of the tacking edge used as a turnover canvas at the top, left and bottom, and at the right the tacking edge is thus used. Cusping is evident in the canvas weave along the bottom. The grounds of the two inner pieces of the support are similar, first a layer of chalk and then one of lead white with black charcoal. On the two top pieces of canvas the ground is of chalk. The ground is a beige colour on the bottom two portions of canvas, while that on the vertical strip of canvas at the left is grey in colour. The figures are mostly painted with reserves, but notably not the youth or horse in the bows of the boat.

There are pentiments in the peasant travellers: the right arm of the milkmaid leaning forward to hand down the churn has been lowered, a cow beneath and slightly to the left of the churn, seen nearly full on, has been suppressed by the youth’s costume and right leg. The cow whose head is in profile has also been added as an afterthought. Very likely, too, is that the boat itself has been extended with the grey (horse) and that the pointing youth was not part of the original composition but later introduced. The rigging and the bay (horse) were painted at the end of the campaign, though the last touches may have been to the curls of the hair of the sailor, who pushes on the punt pole.

On the right-hand side of this scene showing a heavily laden ferry getting under way is depicted the discovery by St Peter of the ‘piece of money’ – which was to serve as the temple tribute money – in the mouth of a fish as predicted by Christ in Matthew 17:24-26.

Why Jacques Jordaens should have combined these two events remains obscure. Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575) had established a tradition in Antwerp of depicting genre scenes in which an apparently unrelated New Testament subject was introduced as a subsidiary event.6Moxey reviews different interpretations of the phenomenon, see K. Moxey, ‘Interpreting Pieter Aertsen. The Problem of “Hidden Symbolism”’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 40 (1990), pp. 29-39, esp. pp. 29-34. A key element in Matthew’s account required a stretch of water as the fish was found at the seashore near Capernaum; so suggestive for Jordaens may have been the obvious fact that a ferry boat was a common sight on the waterways round Antwerp. In the museum painting – as with Aertsen – the peasant travellers are oblivious of the miracle enacted life-size beside them. However, some of the townsfolk above watch with interest, thus Jordaens had sought to give the Biblical event a contemporary topicality, as had, notably, Pieter Brueghel I (c. 1525-1569) on several occasions, for instance in the Vienna Procession to Calvary of 1564 or the Budapest Preaching of St John the Baptist of two years later.7F. Grossmann, Pieter Bruegel: Complete Edition of the Paintings, London 1973, pls. 69, 126. Indeed the concept of temple tribute money had an immediate relevance in Antwerp because in 1611 the aldermen had prescribed that money be collected at celebrations of the Mass for the restoration of the city’s churches.8F. Baudouin, Rubens en zijn eeuw/Rubens et son siècle, translated by V. Uyttebroeck, Antwerp 1972, p. 45; De la Fuente Pedersen in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, p. 28.

From the formal point of view Jordaens’s point of departure for the configuration of the miracle would most likely have been the left-hand wing of Peter Paul Rubens’s triptych of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-over-de-Dijlekerk, Mechelen, executed in 1618-19.9De la Fuente Pedersen in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, p. 30; K. Bulckens, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, V(2): The Life of Christ before the Passion: The Ministery of Christ, London 2017, no. 19, pp. 105-07 and fig. 83. Ferry boats at country landing stages were quite commonly a subject rendered on a small scale by Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) for the bigger treatment here, Jordaens brought all his inventive originality to bear.

The make-up of the composite, canvas support of the Rijksmuseum painting is of six horizontally aligned pieces, with a seventh joined vertically at the left (there are four different grounds with that on the vertically aligned canvas the outlier).10See J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, fig. 1. The present picture is closely related to a far larger work, the great masterpiece by Jordaens in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KMS 3198). Both were the result of a complex painting process and of the two, the latter had a much more complicated evolution.11J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92. It is now generally agreed that the Rijksmuseum picture is a derivation amplified by the inclusion of the spectators on the quay and the view of the estuary and distant shore. Unlike the Copenhagen picture, the Rijksmuseum work is signed in an abbreviated form that Jordaens sometimes used on the relatively few occasions when he signed his work.12R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, nos. A7, A49, A55 (with an ‘E’ at the end of the abbreviated name), A65, A67 (with ‘ns’ in upper case at the end of the abbreviated name), A70, A81 (with ‘D’ also included), A87, A89. The letters are not written with the sureness of touch that might be expected, but they were not questioned during the recent cleaning13J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, p. 96; she includes a stop between the ‘O’ and ‘R’. and so the signature is here accepted with some qualification. This does not mean that the work is to be considered autograph as Jordaens had a seemingly relaxed attitude regarding authenticity as his testimony in the dispute of 1648 with Martinus van Langenhoven makes clear.14R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, p. 14 under 25 August 1648. The artist stated that he retouched copies of his work to the extent that they could be regarded as authentic. In fact the present picture has always been accepted as autograph, although since Held’s observations published in 193315J.S. Held, ‘Nachträglich veränderte Kompositionen bei Jacob Jordaens’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 3 (1933), pp. 8-10. both the make-up of the support (as far as Held could determine it) and the detected differences in handling have led to suggestions that it was not the result of a single painting campaign. Indeed, following Held’s proposal, it has been assumed that it resulted from two distinct campaigns at the easel separated by a number of years,16The latest estimate is a time lag of ‘more than thirty years’; J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, p. 94. a not unique occurrence in Jordaens’s career17R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, A29. (or Rubens’s for that matter).18K. de Clippel, ‘Rubens’s ‘Nymphs and Satyrs’ in the Prado: Observations on its Genesis and Meaning’, The Burlington Magazine 149 (2007), pp. 76-81. The first campaign may have been of a lengthy duration.

Verhave, responsible for the recent conservation treatment, has proposed that the main part of the composition was executed on the two central pieces of canvas.19J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, esp. p. 94. It is also possible, as she concedes, that the original support consisted of these two pieces plus the two below. Certainly added later are the two top pieces, on which were introduced the upper tier of the jetty, the quay with its buildings and onlookers. Probably already present on the inner core was the dark-haired apostle and his companion at the rear of the lower tier of the jetty, even if they were introduced later than the other protagonists, and adjusted when the additional canvases were added at top and bottom during the first campaign.

The recent cleaning has confirmed the contrasts in handling. The townsfolk on the upper tier of the jetty and the two apostles at the rear on the lower platform are fluently rendered and are most likely the work of Jordaens himself circa 1650.20Held (J.S. Held, ‘Nachträglich veränderte Kompositionen bei Jacob Jordaens’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 3 (1933), p. 9) compared the figure above St Peter with the spectators in Jordaens’s Frankfurt Adoration of the Shepherds of 1653; Nico van Hout compared their handling with Jordaens’s modelli for the Oranjezaal of c. 1650; unpublished transcript, referred to under note 1 above. Also by him may well be the youth in the bow of the boat and the right arm of the milkmaid embarking at the stern. Less worthy of an attribution to Jordaens himself are the onlookers on the stone quay, and the buildings beyond, and both the horses (granted the one by the tower being an out of proportion, ghost-like afterthought).21However the clever incorporation of the hand with the female spectator’s face would point to Jordaens’s intervention, observed by J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, esp. p. 94.

Also less certainly by Jordaens are the horse and two cows in the boat; all the other figures there, St Peter and his two immediate companions on the lower platform of the wooden jetty and the sail and rigging cannot be his work as the brushwork is insufficiently vigorous. The estuary, distant view, water as far as the surf beneath St Peter and the feeble leeboard may be by yet another hand.22J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, p. 94; Verhave is non-committal about the status of the brushwork on the left-hand piece of canvas. While there is little to go on, the handling of the distant trees, which continue into the adjacent canvas, is not reminiscent of Jordaens. The surf up to, but not including that beneath St Peter, is consistently handled. Very probably Jordaens worked from right to left in the Copenhagen painting circa 1621-2323J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92, esp. p. 73; this incorporates proposals by D’Hulst c. 1623 (R.A. d’Hulst, Rubens et la peinture baroque, Brussels 1962, p. 3) and Koester c. 1621 (in O. Koester, Flemish Paintings, 1600-1800, Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2000, p. 138). Noldus believes the work was begun in the early 1620s and enlarged in Amsterdam in 1634, see B. Noldus, ‘A Masterpiece’s Long Journey: Provenance and Reception of The Tribute Money by Jacob Jordaens’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 97-119, esp. p. 104. The stages of enlargement and possible sequence of painting campaigns were also adumbrated at the External Advisory Board meeting, referred to under note 1 above, in which three were suggested. and the derivation in its early stages followed the prototype as work progressed towards the bow. This is established by the presence of both the youth reaching up for the churn and the cowherd resting on his charge as this latter was introduced in the Copenhagen painting in order to supplant the former motif (because of this the ferry in the Amsterdam picture is longer abaft).

Not all of Jordaens’s pupils were recorded in the registers of the guild during his career, but listed were probably the first, Charles du Val, in 1620/21, and second, Pierre du Moulyn, in 1621/22.24R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, pp. 7-8. Both could be candidates for making the copy of the Copenhagen picture while it was being executed.

The two nearly naked sailors, the crying child, the bearded man and two hatted youths immediately astern of the mast are repetitions, other motifs abaft the mast in the Amsterdam picture record those which were suppressed in the larger work: the milkmaid handing the churn to the youth as she embarks (not fully understood in the Amsterdam picture as she is not shown holding the handle of the churn), the sheep before the mast and the physiognomies of St Peter (whose hold on the fish is not well understood) and his two companions.25The mosaic of the x-radiographs of the Copenhagen picture is reproduced by J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92, esp. fig. 2, and p. 75. In one instance, a suppressed motif in the derivation occurs undisturbed in the prototype: the cow’s head seen nearly full on.26The mosaic of the x-radiographs of the Copenhagen picture is reproduced by J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92, esp. fig. 2, and p. 75. The head of the young peasant woman by the mast has not been detected at any stage in the execution of the Copenhagen painting.

What appears before the mast in the Amsterdam painting is much simpler and less extensive than the intricate group of ideas finally arrived at in the prototype. X-radiographs of both works indicate that the bow was originally placed beneath the sailor’s lower arm, or, in the case of the Amsterdam picture, beneath the milkmaid with her arm resting on the churn. While the sheep behind her can be made out in x-radiographs of the prototype, this figure cannot be detected. She may first have been intended to occupy the boat in both the Copenhagen painting and the derivation.

The configuration of the milkmaid stepping onto the boat seems to have no precedent in Jordaens’s oeuvre, it may owe something to the tilt of Herse’s body in Rubens’s The Discovery of Erichthonius (Vaduz-Vienna, The Princely Collections).27Healy in E. McGrath, G. Martin, F. Healy, B. Schepers, C. Van de Velde and K. De Clippel, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XI (1): Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces, 2 vols., London/Turnhout 2016, I, no. 41, and II, fig. 333. The model may have been the same as that in the similarly placed daughter of Cecrops in Jordaens’s 1617 treatment of the theme in Antwerp.28R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A14. The model for the youth may have been the same as that in the centre of the Adoration of the Shepherds of 1616 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.29R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A7. Of the other travellers abaft, the young peasant woman may have depended on the same hypothetical head-study which Jordaens used for the peasant’s wife in the Satyr and Peasant Family of circa 1620-21 at Gothenburg.30R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A25. The source of the silhouette for the cow’s head may have been two of the studies in the sketch at Lille of the early 1620s.31R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A28.

The scantily clad St Peter is reminiscent of Jordaens’s early life studies of men covered only for modesty’s sake of which two are extant,32R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, no. A21; and the drawing on the New York market 2011 (offered in a sale, New York (Christie’s), 26 January 2011, no. 282). while his white-haired head focused on the coin and the way the fish is held recalls that adopted by Rubens in the Mechelen altarpiece. The dark bearded apostle seems similar to a favourite Jordaens type, who early appears, for instance, as Zachariah in the Raleigh Virgin and Child with St John and his Parents of circa 1616-17.33R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A11. For the milkmaid in profile in the bows reliance may have been placed on a hypothetical head study, perhaps used for Atalanta in the Prado Meleager and Atalanta34R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A29. of the early 1620s.

Most likely Jordaens himself later extended the composition of the copy by adding the youth leaning on the basket – as has already been mentioned – after the insertion of the horse, neither of which was reserved. The youth was given the new role of making fun of the sailor pushing on his punt pole. His pointing gesture was a favourite idiom, employed by Jordaens in various modes, as in the Kassel Satyr and Peasant35R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, fig. 42A. and much later repeated in the gouache drawing in the Brussels Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, of ‘He who embraces too much, hugs poorly’ (Qui trop embrace mal étreint).36R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, no. A202. The youth’s face is handled in a manner reminiscent of St John in the Pietà of circa 1650 in the Hamburg Kunsthalle.37R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A79. For the horse, perhaps painted under Jordaens’s direction, reference may have been made to the same hypothetical drawing or modello, which had earlier been the basis for that in the Copenhagen prototype and in the Madrid Homage to Ceres of 1623-25.38R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, fig. 32b.

In the background the circular tower and spire are reminiscent of Antwerp structures, for instance the Bakkerstooren and the spire of the Sint-Walburgiskerk as depicted by Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647) in SK-A-1699. These buildings emphasize the difference between the prototype in Copenhagen and the derivation, as the scene depicted in the former took place at a country landing stage. The onlookers on the upper platform of the jetty recall those in the upper right of the Kassel Adoration of the Magi39R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A68. of 1644, while the woman with a basket on her head brings to mind the figure (in reverse) on the left in the Adoration of the Shepherds40R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, under no. A2 and fig. 2b. of circa 1645-50 in the Louvre. The dark-haired apostle behind St Peter may have been the same model used for Christ in drawings of circa 1645 and circa 1650 of Christ before Pilate and Christ and the Pharisees.41R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, A222 and fig. 237, A296 and fig. 313.

Although it has been suggested that the Rijksmuseum picture played some kind of role in the evolution of the masterpiece in Copenhagen,42As was mooted at the External Advisory Board meeting referred to under note 1 above. this is very unlikely. And the fact that both paintings were probably in Amsterdam at least by the eighteenth century may be no more than a coincidence, but it is thought-provoking nevertheless. While it is not the place here to speculate as to whether the Copenhagen painting was commissioned by Louis de Geer I (1587-1652),43As advocated by B. Noldus, ‘A Masterpiece’s Long Journey: Provenance and Reception of The Tribute Money by Jacob Jordaens’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 97-119, esp. pp. 104-11. it seems most likely that the Rijksmuseum derivation was initially executed as a copy, which Jordaens later reworked with the speculative intention of selling it in much the same way as he had retouched copies that he had sold to Van Langenhoven.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 69-92; J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96

Collection catalogues

1891, p. 89, no. 742 (as Jordaens); 1903, p. 144, no. 1316; 1934, p. 149, no. 1316; 1976, p. 309, no. C 439

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Jacques Jordaens and workshop of Jacques Jordaens, A Ferry Departs as St Peter Finds a Coin in the Mouth of a Fish, c. 1621 - c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8856

(accessed 13 May 2025 14:18:07).

Footnotes

  • 1List of pictures, with a deposition made by the husband of Maria de Reus, Adriaen Le Febre, archival document N-284, GPI, from the GAA, NAA 4384 (film 4378), fols. 616v-617v; first related to the Amsterdam picture in the unpublished Research Report for the External Advisory Board, meeting at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 15 February 2008, p. 7, with corrections offered at the meeting itself, unpublished transcript; both documents kindly made available to the compiler.
  • 2Label numbered ‘4’ on reverse of the frame.
  • 3J.M. Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector, Princeton 1989, p. 138.
  • 4S. 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.
  • 5The make-up of the support was published by J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, fig. 1.
  • 6Moxey reviews different interpretations of the phenomenon, see K. Moxey, ‘Interpreting Pieter Aertsen. The Problem of “Hidden Symbolism”’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 40 (1990), pp. 29-39, esp. pp. 29-34.
  • 7F. Grossmann, Pieter Bruegel: Complete Edition of the Paintings, London 1973, pls. 69, 126.
  • 8F. Baudouin, Rubens en zijn eeuw/Rubens et son siècle, translated by V. Uyttebroeck, Antwerp 1972, p. 45; De la Fuente Pedersen in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, p. 28.
  • 9De la Fuente Pedersen in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, p. 30; K. Bulckens, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, V(2): The Life of Christ before the Passion: The Ministery of Christ, London 2017, no. 19, pp. 105-07 and fig. 83.
  • 10See J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, fig. 1.
  • 11J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92.
  • 12R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, nos. A7, A49, A55 (with an ‘E’ at the end of the abbreviated name), A65, A67 (with ‘ns’ in upper case at the end of the abbreviated name), A70, A81 (with ‘D’ also included), A87, A89.
  • 13J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, p. 96; she includes a stop between the ‘O’ and ‘R’.
  • 14R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, p. 14 under 25 August 1648. The artist stated that he retouched copies of his work to the extent that they could be regarded as authentic.
  • 15J.S. Held, ‘Nachträglich veränderte Kompositionen bei Jacob Jordaens’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 3 (1933), pp. 8-10.
  • 16The latest estimate is a time lag of ‘more than thirty years’; J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, p. 94.
  • 17R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, A29.
  • 18K. de Clippel, ‘Rubens’s ‘Nymphs and Satyrs’ in the Prado: Observations on its Genesis and Meaning’, The Burlington Magazine 149 (2007), pp. 76-81.
  • 19J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, esp. p. 94.
  • 20Held (J.S. Held, ‘Nachträglich veränderte Kompositionen bei Jacob Jordaens’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 3 (1933), p. 9) compared the figure above St Peter with the spectators in Jordaens’s Frankfurt Adoration of the Shepherds of 1653; Nico van Hout compared their handling with Jordaens’s modelli for the Oranjezaal of c. 1650; unpublished transcript, referred to under note 1 above.
  • 21However the clever incorporation of the hand with the female spectator’s face would point to Jordaens’s intervention, observed by J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, esp. p. 94.
  • 22J. Verhave, ‘The Amsterdam Painting: A Puzzle in Itself’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 93-96, p. 94; Verhave is non-committal about the status of the brushwork on the left-hand piece of canvas. While there is little to go on, the handling of the distant trees, which continue into the adjacent canvas, is not reminiscent of Jordaens. The surf up to, but not including that beneath St Peter, is consistently handled.
  • 23J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92, esp. p. 73; this incorporates proposals by D’Hulst c. 1623 (R.A. d’Hulst, Rubens et la peinture baroque, Brussels 1962, p. 3) and Koester c. 1621 (in O. Koester, Flemish Paintings, 1600-1800, Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2000, p. 138). Noldus believes the work was begun in the early 1620s and enlarged in Amsterdam in 1634, see B. Noldus, ‘A Masterpiece’s Long Journey: Provenance and Reception of The Tribute Money by Jacob Jordaens’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2008-09, pp. 97-119, esp. p. 104. The stages of enlargement and possible sequence of painting campaigns were also adumbrated at the External Advisory Board meeting, referred to under note 1 above, in which three were suggested.
  • 24R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, pp. 7-8.
  • 25The mosaic of the x-radiographs of the Copenhagen picture is reproduced by J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92, esp. fig. 2, and p. 75.
  • 26The mosaic of the x-radiographs of the Copenhagen picture is reproduced by J. Verhave, ‘Jordaens at Work, Layer upon Layer’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 69-92, esp. fig. 2, and p. 75.
  • 27Healy in E. McGrath, G. Martin, F. Healy, B. Schepers, C. Van de Velde and K. De Clippel, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XI (1): Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces, 2 vols., London/Turnhout 2016, I, no. 41, and II, fig. 333.
  • 28R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A14.
  • 29R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A7.
  • 30R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A25.
  • 31R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A28.
  • 32R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, no. A21; and the drawing on the New York market 2011 (offered in a sale, New York (Christie’s), 26 January 2011, no. 282).
  • 33R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A11.
  • 34R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A29.
  • 35R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, fig. 42A.
  • 36R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, no. A202.
  • 37R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A79.
  • 38R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, fig. 32b.
  • 39R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, no. A68.
  • 40R.-A. d’Hulst et al., Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), I: Paintings and Tapestries, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1993, under no. A2 and fig. 2b.
  • 41R.A. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, translated by P.S. Falla, 4 vols., London/New York 1974, A222 and fig. 237, A296 and fig. 313.
  • 42As was mooted at the External Advisory Board meeting referred to under note 1 above.
  • 43As advocated by B. Noldus, ‘A Masterpiece’s Long Journey: Provenance and Reception of The Tribute Money by Jacob Jordaens’, in T. Filtenborg et al., Jordaens: The Making of a Masterpiece, exh. cat. Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst)/Maastricht (Bonnefantenmuseum) 2008-09, pp. 97-119, esp. pp. 104-11.