The King Drinks

In 1787 the Amsterdam dealer Fouquet bought this canvas in Holland for Louis XVI, probably from the family of another dealer, Fiseau, who had owned it. Six years later France had no king. Louis was executed in January 1793, and when the Louvre opened as a public museum that August, the picture went on show under a plain title, A Flemish Family Meal. Its real subject is a king of another kind, the one crowned on Twelfth Night for finding the bean in the cake, and Jordaens painted the scene more than half a dozen times. In this version, from around 1638 to 1640, the old man in the crown sits at the far left with his glass at his lips while a boy above him pours more wine, and a fool in a jester's cap looks on from the back of the table.