Brussels, found masterpiece by Jacob Jordaens in the office of the city planning commissioner!

An unpublished work by one of the great masters of seventeenth-century Flemish art, Jacob Jordaens (Antwerp, 1593 - 1678), a Holy Family, has been discovered in Brussels: the find took place in the town hall of Saint-Gilles, a town of forty-five thousand inhabitants on the outskirts of the capital, and the work has been identified as a painting by Jordaens by art historians at theInstitut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique (IRPA), the main state agency dealing with cultural heritage, who call the discovery “incredible.”

It does indeed seem strange to say, but the work had been in the offices of the town planning assessor of the municipality of Saint-Gilles for more than sixty years. No one ever suspected that it was a masterpiece, because it was considered a copy: now, however, technicians have managed to identify it as the original version of the composition that Jordaens later repurposed in the counterparts masterpieces now housed in the Metropolitan in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and the Alte Pinakothe in Munich. The work will be restored, after which, it is assumed in late 2021, the public will be able to admire the Holy Family at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where it will be displayed alongside other works by Jordaens.

The discovery came as part of an inventory campaign sponsored by the Brussels Region and conducted by IRPA, which aimed to comprehensively and systematically inventory all the assets of the Saint-Gilles town hall. “When we detached the painting from the wall,” says art historian Constantin Pion of IRPA, “we found some clues that had never been detected, observed, or described, for example, some hallmarks of the panel, and a punched monogram composed of two initials, the letter G and the letter A of Guilliam Aertsen: Jordaens often painted on panels made by Guilliam Aertsen. The work itself then revealed important clues: a dendrochronological study allowed us to precisely date the felling of the oak tree that was used to make the panel, so this is where the research began.”

The Jacob Jordaens panel discovered in Saint-Gilles

Constantin Pion in front of the work

After art historians noticed these signs, the work was subjected to some scientific examinations: radiography, reflectography, X-ray fluorescence analysis, macrophotography and more. Thus began a multidisciplinary study initiated in collaboration with art historian Joost Vander Auwera of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts (a Jordaens specialist), which led to the conclusion that it is a Jordaens painting from 1615. “There are other versions of this composition: in Munich, in the Hermitage, in the Metropolitan Museum,” says Vander Auwera. “They are all datable to advanced moments in Jordaens’ career, and we have come to the conclusion that the Saint-Gilles version is probably the oldest. A very interesting conclusion for research on Jordaens. We have a project, the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project, which aims to analyze all panel paintings by Jordaens and van Dyck worldwide. We have already studied 157 of them. Thanks to dendrochronological dating we can establish that the panel has a date no earlier than 1613, and we have also discovered that three apostles attributed to Van Dyck are painted on panels made from the same, identical tree. This discovery is very important because it is a clue that supports the theory that Van Dyck and Jordaens were active very early together in Rubens’ atelier.”

The X-ray revealed a technique compatible with that used by Jordaens (extremely rapid touches of color, a great spontaneity typical of the Flemish painter’s style), and also some gaps that were remedied by later restorations during the 19th century. The goal of the restorers now is to remove the 19th-century varnish in order to understand what state the painting is in under the materials altered over time. After cleaning, the work will focus on the wooden support.

But why was the work located in Saint-Gilles? In the 19th century, the work was part of the collection of Léopold Speekaert, a painter from Brussels who, upon his death, donated the works in his collection to the Municipality of Saint-Gilles: these works were set up in a museum that opened in 1917 and in which the Holy Family was listed as a work attributed with some caution to Jacob Jordaens, and was displayed along with other paintings assigned to other Flemish artists of the 17th century. In 1965, the entire collection flowed into the City Hall collections, because the City no longer had adequate resources to maintain the building that housed the museum, and was forced to sell it (the building was later destroyed). And that is how the work came to the office of the city planning commissioner.

“It gives great pleasure both to me and to the whole town of Saint-Gilles,” declares the mayor, Charles Picqué, “to know that in a private collection donated to the town hall there was a treasure of this importance. Our town hall is an extraordinary jewel, built thanks to the contribution of great artists such as Lambeaux, Dillens, Khnopff, Rops: it is full of works by great artists who worked on the structure, but this will obviously be an exceptional element of our collection.”

Brussels, found masterpiece by Jacob Jordaens in the office of the city planning commissioner!

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