The Miracles of Saint Dominic - a modello

Depicting The Miracles of Saint Dominic, this small work is believed to be a modello for Jacob Jordaens’ large altarpiece painted in the first half of the 1640s (Oldenburg, Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschicht). The composition of the present canvas differs from the final work and thus significantly serves as an insight into Jordaens’ working practices, either documenting the painter changing and adapting his composition, or an alternative version of the proposed design, which might have been produced for the patron. Some elements of the sketch do appear in the Oldenburg painting, however, like the woman kneeling in the centre foreground and the calm figure of the saint, positioned at the apex of the composition, who stands in contrast to the dynamic group of imploring figures below him. Several of the figures in the lower section of the composition also relate to drawings by the artist, traditionally described as depicting the distribution of alms (R. d’Hulst (ed.), Tekeningen van Jacob Jordaen 1593-1678, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp and Rotterdam, 1966, nos. 11 and 12).

The Dominican Order had been established in Antwerp since the late thirteenth century, consecrating the Church of Saint Paul (Sint-Pauluskerk) in the city in 1276. With the re-establishment of Catholicism in Antwerp in 1585 (following a brief period of Calvinism), the church, and Dominican monastery of which it was part, were rebuilt and refurbished, a project that was ongoing throughout much of the succeeding century and eventually completed in 1662. Numerous leading artists in Antwerp were commissioned to create works for the church, including Peter Paul Rubens (whose Disputation of the Holy Sacrament of circa 1609 still remains in the church), Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens himself. While there remains scant evidence that the Miracles of Saint Dominic was painted for the Antwerp Church of Saint Paul, Jordaens’ activity for the Dominicans there shows that he was working in such circles and the Oldenburg altarpiece, with the present modello representing the continuation of the artist’s relationship with the Order in the Netherlands.

We are grateful to Brecht Vanoppen of the Centrum Rubenianum for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs and his assistance in the cataloguing of this work.