Autoportrait

By the time Jordaens painted this, around 1649, he was the last major master left in Antwerp. Rubens had died in 1640 and Van Dyck the year after, and the workshop tradition that had made the city Europe's paint capital passed to Jordaens almost by default. He shows himself at home rather than at the easel, looking up from a sheet of paper as if you had just walked in. The clothes look relaxed, but the gold braid on the jacket and the row of buttons are the dress of a wealthy man who no longer needs to prove it. He was in his mid-fifties here, running the largest studio in the city and quietly turning Calvinist in a firmly Catholic town. This is the only self-portrait securely by his hand in any Belgian collection today.