Portrait of the artist with his family

Antwerp, 1621 or 1622. The Twelve Years' Truce between Spain and the Dutch Republic had just run out, the fighting was on again, and the Scheldt, the river the city lived by, stayed closed to seagoing trade. In those same months Jordaens was elected dean of the Antwerp painters' guild, and this is the household he chose to show. He stands at the right with one foot on the stretcher of a chair. His wife Catharina van Noort sits in black with an enormous white ruff, and their first child Elizabeth stands in white with coral beads and a small basket of flowers. Behind them a servant in red carries grapes. The museum dates the picture by Elizabeth alone, since she was born on 26 June 1617 and looks about four here, which is why the label reads 1621 to 1622 and not a single year. The lute in Jordaens's left hand is the part nobody can settle. Nothing says he played, and the museum offers it as a plain sign of family harmony. At the lower left the number 439 is painted straight onto the canvas, the number it carried in 1746 in the king and queen's bedroom at the palace of La Granja.