“This discovery really appeals to the imagination!" enthused Hilde de Clercq, Director General of the Royal Institute for Artistic Heritage (IRPA). “What a dreamed occasion to underline the importance of the Brussels heritage inventory."
Kept in the office of the town planning magistrate for nearly sixty years, a work initially considered a simple copy has now been authenticated as a painting by the Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678). It represents the artist's earliest known version of The Holy Family, a theme that the master took up in three other paintings now kept in the prestigious Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the Alte Pinakothek from Munich.
It's an extraordinary moment of emotion to discover an original work of one of the greatest Baroque painters.
The authentication of the work, which represents more than a year of in-depth research, is the result of the scientific collaboration between the IRPA, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (MRBAB) and the international experts of the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project. Analysis today allows us to attribute this work with certainty to Jordaens, from around 1617-18.
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A dendrochronological examination also revealed that the wood panel came from the same tree used by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), reinforcing "the hypothesis put forward... that the young Jordaens and Van Dyck were simultaneously active in [Peter Paul] Rubens' workshop," said Joost Vander Auwera, curator and co-founder of the Jordaens Van Dyck Paintings Project.
The Holy Family of Saint-Gilles will now benefit from a one-year restoration campaign funded by urban.brussels.
As the IRPA said in a statement, yellowed varnishes and darkened touch-ups will be removed, while the flooring on the back of the panel will be treated to prevent possible cracks or loss of paint. Additional analysis will complete the knowledge around the pictorial technique of Jordaens in his early career.
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“It is an extraordinary moment of emotion to discover an original work by one of the greatest Baroque painters,” said Constantin Pion, art historian at IRPA. "Just as it is to experience the fascinating scientific investigation that revealed that this Holy Family is an early painting and represents an important milestone in the works of Jacob Jordaens."
The painting will be exhibited at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium at the end of 2021, after having regained all its original brilliance and colours. It will thus join one of the most important collections of Jacob Jordaens in the world.
