Jacob Jordaens

When Rubens died in 1640 and Van Dyck a year later, Jacob Jordaens became the leading painter of Antwerp almost by default, and he filled the role with noise, food and laughter. Where Rubens had grandeur and Van Dyck elegance, Jordaens brought a rowdy, earthy warmth, crowding his canvases with fat, red-faced revellers close enough to touch.

His favourite subjects were Flemish proverbs turned into feasts. In The King Drinks he shows the old Twelfth Night custom where whoever finds the bean in the cake is crowned king for the night, and the whole table roars and drinks as the paper king raises his glass. In another he paints an old couple singing while children pipe along, illustrating the saying that the young imitate the old.

Unlike most ambitious Flemish painters he never went to Italy, staying his whole life in Antwerp and learning from Rubens close at hand. Late in life he converted to Protestantism in a Catholic city, which brought him trouble, and he kept painting into his eighties. He died in 1678 of an illness that also killed his daughter, the two buried together.