Knabenkopf

1615

Admitted to the guild as a master “water painter”

After eight years of training Jordaens was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a master waterscilder (“water painter”), one who painted in water-based paints the canvases that served as substitutes for tapestries or as tapestry cartoons; other accounts give 1616. Unlike Rubens and van Dyck, he never went to Italy and, apart from short trips within the Low Countries, lived in Antwerp all his life.

15 May 1616

Marries his master's daughter Catharina van Noort

Jordaens married Adam van Noort's eldest daughter Catharina (other accounts call her Anna Catharina). At first the couple lived with or near his father-in-law; they had three children: Elisabeth, Jacob, who became a painter, and Anna Catharina.

1639–1640

Charles I's commission: “The Story of Cupid and Psyche”

Through the English king's agent in Brussels, Balthazar Gerbier, and the diplomat Cesare Alessandro Scaglia, Jordaens received a commission for 22 paintings for the Queen's House at Greenwich without knowing the patron or the destination; when Rubens, Gerbier's preferred choice, died on 30 May 1640, the whole commission passed to Jordaens. But Scaglia died in May 1641, only eight paintings reached the English court, and a dispute with his heirs over payment for seven of them dragged on into the next generation.

1640–1641

After Rubens's death, Antwerp's leading painter

With the deaths of Rubens in 1640 and van Dyck in 1641, Jordaens became the leading painter of Antwerp, and commissions came increasingly from abroad; Rubens's heirs asked him to finish “Perseus and Andromeda” for Philip IV. He never became a court painter: he worked mainly for wealthy townspeople and the clergy.