PROVENANCE: Mortimer Brandt Collection, 1959; BJU M&G, 1959.

Like Rubens, Jacob Jordaens began his artistic training in the studio of Adam van Noort. After election to the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1615, Jordaens began to create masterworks of his own and receive local commissions. Even though he never traveled to Italy , the early work of Jordaens betrays the influence of the art of Caravaggio (perhaps known through the paintings of Janssens). Rubens employed Jordaens to collaborate with him on a number of important tapestry and oil series for royalty. It was not until Rubens' death in 1640 and Anthony van Dyck's a year later that the artist's position as the city's best painter was fully secured. The art of Jordaens is, in general, easily recognized because of his personalized style of depicting figures that border on caricature. He had a long and successful career producing many portraits, religious and mythological works, and tapestry designs. Later in life Jordaens converted to the Calvinistic Christian faith within a town dominated by Catholic rule.The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is a representative work showing Rubens' influence on Jordaens during his most mature period. The treatment of the theatrical interior and busy composition are Rubenesque, and Rubens' painting of the same subject on the right wing of his famous triptych of the Descent from the Cross (1611-14) in Antwerp's cathedral likely inspired the painting itself. A drawing ( Metropolitan Museum, New York) shows the artist's first thoughts on the composition that is fleshed out in the present painting.

The elderly figures in this work especially illustrate the kind of stylization and caricature that Jordaens often used. The presence of a basket with animals (here, birds) in a cage in the left foreground is another device that is typical of Jordaens' religious works.