The Triumph of Apollo, and Prometheus’ Gifts of the Arts to Humanity

The appearance at auction in 2000¹ brought this previously unknown Triumph of Apollo to the attention of Nora De Poorter, one of the foremost scholars on the work of the Flemish artist Jacques Jordaens (1593-1678). The auction catalogue entry quotes her attribution of the painting to Jordaens and its identification as a modello, dateable to circa 1655-1660, comparable to ‘another’ modello for the Triumph of Frederick Henry². She further supports the attribution by pointing to the repetition of the yellow circle and of the small boy standing in the lower right corner in his Allegory of the Peace of Westphalia in the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo (fig. 1)³.

Matìas Dìaz Padròn was the first to publish this painting in 2018⁴. Accepting the attribution to Jordaens, he assumed it to be a sketch of high quality for an unknown but important commission, and drew particular attention to the artist’s use of the low vantage point to integrate a rhythm of ascending movement into the composition. The execution and technical virtuosity prompted Diaz Pardon to propose a date towards 1650.

He too related the painting to the Allegory in Oslo where Chronos (Father Time) forms the axis whereas he takes his place at the upper right in the present painting. Probably in an attempt to support his dating of circa 1650, Dìaz Padròn compared the female nude, seen from the back and painting at her easel, to a comparable figure in three other compositions depicting the goddess Diana and her entourage, and likened the kneeling male nude to a satyr in a fourth mythological scene, all traditionally dated to circa 1650⁵. Dìaz Padròn also compared the crouched male nude with a figure on the upper right of the Last Judgment of 1653 in the Louvre⁶ and noted a similar use of circles of spectral light.

Turning to the identification of the other figures, Dìaz Padròn noted the presence of Chronos, Apollo in conversation with Caelus and his daughters Basilea & Rhea, all lit by the rays of the sun. He however struggled with the figures in the lower zone, cast in shadows. There he identified naked Venus, Minerva with her helmet behind Vulcan, who sculpts Pandora in marble, the backlit figure of Mercury who raises his staff to implant evil in Pandora’s heart, and finally Prometheus, seen from the back, attempting to steal fire from the wheels of Apollo’s chariot. On the basis of the presence of these figures, Dìaz Padròn believed the scene is based on Hesiod’s account of the story of Prometheus⁷:

Prometheus (Greek for “forethought”) was the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clemene, brother to Menoetus, Atlas and the mindless Epimetheus (Greek for ‘afterthought’). When he played a trick on Jupiter, the god was so angered by the deceit that he decided to punish man by hiding fire, which Prometheus then stole back and returned to humanity. As punishment, Jupiter had him shackled on the summit of Mount Caucasus where an eagle came daily to pick out his liver until, according to some versions, he was rescued by Hercules. Jupiter also instructed Vulcan to make from clay an enchanting maiden modelled on the goddesses and ordered all the gods to contribute gifts which would turn this beautiful woman, whom he named Pandora, into a plague for men.

In 2024 Jasper Hillegers published a considerably more detailed text⁸ in which he first draws attention to Jordaens’s use of halos in paintings made between 1644 to 1654⁹, the period in which he situates the present work. Agreeing with Dìaz Padròn on the identification of the deities in the upper section and on Prometheus stealing fire from Apollo’s sun chariot, he however rightly questions his reference to Hesiod to identify the kneeling man as Vulcan since he lacks a hammer, one of his attributes, and also notes Dìaz Padròn’s failure to explain the reason for the presence of the female nude in front of her easel as the personification of the art of painting.

Hillegers then provides an elaborate survey of the evolution of the Prometheus myth in the writings of Aeschylus, Plato, Ovid, Catullus, Horace and Lucian¹⁰, and the iconography found on contemporaneous Roman sarcophagi showing Prometheus forming human figures from clay which are then animated by Minerva. He duly cites similar examples of Prometheus as the creator of mankind in works of the Early Modern period both north and south of the Alps and concludes that Jordaens must have been aware of this artistic tradition. The fact that Jordaens also referred to Lucian’s account for his Prometheus Bound¹¹, rather than Hesiod’s, as was the case with Rubens’s earlier treatment of that subject¹², is noteworthy.

Hillegers concludes that the brilliance with which Jordaens presents Apollo as patron of the arts emphasizes the power and glory of his divine fire as the source of all the arts. The presence of Mercury as instructor as well as patron of the arts, Pictura in the act of painting, ideal beauty in the form of Venus, dividers (not a chisel as Hillegers erroneously mentions) in the hand of Prometheus, compass and square at his side, finally makes sense.

Hillegers also speculates about the purpose of this multifaceted work. He explores the possibility of it being a modello, especially as it has a similar format to those created for The Triumph of Frederik Hendrik in the Oranjezaal (Huis ten Bosch), but given its more detailed execution and lack of a larger finished work, and following correspondence with Brecht Vanoppen, concludes that The Triumph of Apollo is more likely to be a painting that was left unfinished until a potential buyer appeared¹³.

Allowing for a slightly later date than that proposed by Dìaz Padròn, Hillegers peruses the possibility that the painting might be associated with the founding of the Antwerp Academy of Art or intended for the decoration of Jordaens’s own house, but in the absence of archival support, dismisses these options.

Considered an unusual composition and theme by Dìaz Padròn, the clarity with which such a multi-storied configuration was so successfully conceived was possible only after Jordeans had reached full artistic maturity, just as is the appearance of this type of theme in his oeuvre. The prospect of competing with Rubens and Van Dyck on the 1628 commission for the Church of the Augustinians in Antwerp, where each artist had to submit an altarpiece, may well have encouraged Jordaens to conceive his Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia as his first ambitious attempt at juxtaposing figures on several levels in one composition¹⁴. Prior to that date, Jordaens’s multi-figure compositions lack convincing spatial structure and even in the 1628 commission and for several years after this date, such configurations remain cluttered and without real clarity.

Mythological and allegorical subjects have played an important part throughout Jordaens’s career but were prior to the 1640s mostly limited to Ovidian and bucolic themes, probably inspired by Italian plays on these subjects performed at the Brussels court around 1620 and soon after adopted by Antwerp’s Rhetoricians¹⁵.

The creation of the Paris Académie de Peinture et Sculpture in 1648 by artists who wanted to break free from the guild system, and the ensuing new subject matter chosen to validate the intellectual dominance of the visual arts, are likely to have been the catalysts for Jordaens to try his hand at novel themes such as the present composition. Throughout his life, Jordaens continually sought new content for his paintings, not least in an attempt to be one step ahead of his competitors. Thanks to this ambition, he was the first to produce genre scenes on a monumental scale, sometimes subtly incorporating into his compositions a deeper allegorical or political meaning, thus ensuring that his works conformed to the convention that large-scale paintings were normally reserved for the ‘higher’ historical, religious or mythological subjects¹⁶.

Few paintings by Jordaens on the theme of the Liberal Arts have survived and date mostly from circa 1660¹⁷. The two best documented canvasses, Industry and Commerce Fostering the Arts (fig. 2) and Pegasus were specifically painted for the newly created Antwerp Academy, founded in 1664–1665, though they are badly overpainted following severe water damage in the 18th century. Moreover, given their impressive size and the advanced age of the artist, they were possibly executed for a large part by the artist’s studio¹⁸. An Aeneas Aided by the Gods¹⁹, painted probably shortly before the Antwerp Academy paintings, gives a better idea of how they might have originally appeared. The model for Aeneas was reused by Jordaens for the figure of Apollo in stylistically related versions of the Inspiration of a Poet (fig. 3)²⁰ in which the poet is given a drink by a woman while surrounded by Apollo, Mercury and numerous other figures whilst Pegasus comes flying in, just as is the case in the Antwerp Academy paintings where the poet is also shown drinking in one of the pictures and Pegasus appears in another. The figure of the poet, now standing and depicted as a well-dressed young man, is again utilized in the Allegory of Religion and Philosophy Protecting a Young Man from Succumbing to the Vices and Passions²¹. All of the aforementioned paintings are dateable circa 1660-1665.

Jordaens’s drawings also offer examples on the theme of the Arts which are dateable after 1655: a splendidly vivid and successfully composed Triumph of Minerva (fig. 4)²² and two depictions of a Homage to the Poet²³ of circa 1660 showing a muse offering a drinking cup in the presence of figures including Mercury and Pegasus. All these works provide additional proof, if needed, to Jordaens’s interest in this particular theme.

Turning to the nude figure of Venus in the present painting, a good comparison can be found in a drawing, dated 1657, showing a female nude in a very similar attitude²⁴ and in a 1655 painting of Hebe that shows her with comparable milky flesh tones and pouting lips²⁵.

Jordaens’s use of halos in his painted compositions were not necessarily limited to the years 1644-1654, as illustrated by a recently discovered Triumph of Religion, now at the Eglise Notre Dame, Argentré-du-Plessis. The years 1655–1660 seem plausible for this painting, considering the angularity of the folds, the intensive gaze of the two angels holding incense burners in the foreground, and the extremely calm and symmetrical disposition of the figures²⁶.

In short, the present author agrees with Nora De Poorter’s dating of this painting of circa 1655–1660.

The subject of this painting was correctly identified as The Triumph of Apollo already in 2000, but the complex iconography in its lower area remained a mystery. Subsequently, Hillegers managed to correctly identify its protagonists and Lucian as the likely source²⁷, though overlooked the very prominant and convenient publication which Jordaens most likely used²⁸: Carel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck, first published in 1604 and considered the Bible for painters in the 17th century. Van Mander begins this quintessential publication with a description of all the painters, ancient and modern, north and south of the Alps, and continues with an account and interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, dealing with each of the mythological figures of antiquity. Starting with Prometheus, van Mander recounts the story of his sculpting human figures and Minerva’s pleasure in his work. With the goddess’s help, Prometheus was taken up to Olympus and seeing how fire animated everything, he desired the same for his work and approached the sun chariot to light a torch at its wheel. Back on earth, he lit the soul of his statue and gifted it with many arts. Van Mander also recalls Lucian’s account of the ensuing punishment of Prometheus, which Jordaens followed in his Prometheus Bound²⁹. Why Rubens did not follow Lucian’s but rather the much earlier Hesiod version is likely because the former’s satyric style and libertine writings had fallen into disrepute during the Contra-Reformation with its emphasis on the use of unequivocal images and its abhorrence for irony³⁰. Rubens, well versed in Latin, would choose the more established sources to look for guidance. Lucian’s more easily translatable school Latin made him a bestseller in the early renaissance as his texts could also be easily adapted for plays. By the 17th century, Lucian’s original texts were largely forgotten, but continued their afterlife in the hands of the Rhetoricians and Carel van Mander.

The complexity of the iconography and the fact that the various elements of the story have been integrated into the composition without notable changes during execution, as is evident from the x-ray image, clearly indicate that Jordaens carefully planned the creative process. Moreover, the painting’s size corresponds with that of a number of versions of the Homage to the Poet. Taken together, all these factors reduce considerably the chances of this Triumph of Apollo being a modello, but point instead to a composition that was painted for the market but left waiting for a customer before being completely finished, the degree to which depending on the price the buyer was prepared to pay.

Sometime around 1640 Jordaens started to create paintings using much thinner layers of oil paint alongside more thickly executed compositions. Over time some of these thinly applied paint layers have become translucent and/or abraded and this is likely what happened to the present painting³¹.

An example of such a thinly painted composition is the Adoration of the Shepherds at the Städelmuseum, Frankfurt, where it is catalogued as a sketch even though it is signed and dated 1653 by the artist³².

As established above, The Triumph of Apollo stylistically fits the period around 1655–1660 and thus well before the inauguration of the Antwerp Academy in 1665. Jordaens, however, was one of the signatories of a petition seeking to establish an Academy in Antwerp that was presented as early as the Spring of 1662 to the Spanish king³³. Another important factor may have been the return to Antwerp in 1655 of Justus Van Egmont, who had been active in Rubens’s studio and following his move to Paris was one of the original twelve Académiciens who founded the Academy there in 1648. Moreover, the archivist and art historian F.J. van den Branden cites unpublished and unfortunately unreferenced correspondence between David Teniers the Younger and Hendrik van Halmale, Dean of the St Luke’s Guild, in 1655 concerning an attempt to revive the arts in Antwerp through the creation of an academy³⁴. It is thus no surprise that precisely around this time Jordaens appears to have taken a keen interest in themes related to the celebration of the Arts.

The unfinished appearance of The Triumph of Apollo is an indication that there was no buyer in sight at the time of its conception, but it is tempting to conjecture that Jordaens had from the start anticipated the founding of an Academy in Antwerp and was thus in the position to include this thematically relevant canvas in his gift of ‘several’ paintings to the Antwerp Academy in 1665³⁵. Three such canvasses survive to this day, with one of them documented as belonging to an unrelated commission³⁶. A highly significant source is the inventory of the Academy for the year 1704 which reveals that Jordaens gave a total of eleven paintings, of which two by that date were irreparably damaged³⁷. No further details are given about the subject matter of the remaining nine. The St Luke Guild inventories of 1694, 1717, 1748 and 1756 as well as the 18th–century travel guides by Gerard Berbie and Jean Baptiste Descamps are even less precise³⁸. In 1761 the dean of the Guild was authorized to have extensive repairs done to the roof, but it is only though the personal notebook of Jacobus vander Sanden, the secretary of the Academy, that we learn that those ‘old’ paintings damaged by leaks and other calamities had been taken down and sold, again without further details about the nature of these deaccessioned paintings. The two rhetorician Guilds, De Violieren and De Olijftak, merged in 1662 and formed part of the Antwerp Painters’ Guild and performed plays in the Guild’s chambers on the Feast of Saint Luke, patron of painters. Possible allusions in these plays to the subjects of the paintings decorating the great room in which they were performed have, unfortunately, proved to be limited and inconclusive³⁹. For now, and until other evidence comes to light, it can only be assumed that Jordaens devised his Triumph of Apollo specifically for the Antwerp Academy or, alternatively, presented it as a topically suitable subject⁴⁰.