Jacob Jordaens was a Flemish painter, tapestry designer and draughtsman. In 17th-century Flemish art, he is characterized by his great stylistic versatility.

His religious, mythological and historical representations evolved from Baroque, into a formal idiom. The lack of idealistic treatment in his work is undoubtedly the factor that most removed Jordaens’s art from that of his great Flemish contemporary Peter Paul Rubens.

Rubens was undoubtedly a great influence on the work of his mature period. His female figures are amply fleshed, his male figures robust and powerful looking, and yet he retains the early influence of Caravaggio in the coarser physical types he chose and the stronger contrasts of light and shade which are so characteristic of much of his work.

Jordaens’s commissioned works included many paintings in which the subject-matter clashed with some of his figures. After Rubens’s death in 1640, Jordaens became the most prominent artist in the southern Netherlands. He received royal commissions from from the north, where pomp and circumstance were avoided and few demands were made in the way of perfection.