(Antwerp 1593–1678)
The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs,
oil on panel, with the clover-leaf mark of the panel maker Michiel Claessens (active from 1590, died 1637) on the reverse, 76.9 x 105.6 cm, framed

Provenance:
(possibly) sale, Regnaut, Ghent, 30 October 1821, lot 20 (as Jacques Jordaens, Combat des Centaures et des Lapithes);
with Galerie Neupert, Zurich;
sale, Van Ham, Cologne, 14 February 2008, lot 1074;
Private collection, Belgium

Literature:
J. Vander Auwera, Jacques Jordaens, his panels and panel makers: identifications and patterns, in: Jordaens Van Dyck Journal 3, April 2022, pp. 54-71

We are grateful to Joost Vander Auwera, Honorary Curator Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and Co-Founder Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project, for confirming the attribution to Jacob Jordaens, after inspection in the original. He suggests a date of execution for the present work of circa 1616.

The present panel depicts the Battle Between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, XII, 210-535. The writhing figures, their musculature and the articulation of their intertwined forms, so wonderfully rendered by Jordaens, shows the attempted abduction of the Lapiths’ womenfolk, notably the blonde-haired figure on the right of the composition, and the ensuing struggle unfolding throughout the picture space. The Lapiths had invited the Centaurs and the Thessalonian chiefs to attend wedding festivities at a shady grotto near their palace. When the bride entered and the guests congratulated her on her beauty, the wildest of the Centaurs, Euryton, inflamed with wine, could no longer contain his lust. As painted by Jordaens, Euyton seized the bride and his rapacious Centaurs followed suit, abducting any women they could lay hands upon. But on the left of the picture, Euryton is halted in his tracks by the Lapith Theseus, who freed Hippodamia and killed her captor. The violent, chaotic melee continued until nightfall – at which point the remaining Centaurs flee under cover of darkness, (see I. Schaudies, Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, in: J. Vander Auwera, I. Schaudies, J. Lange (eds.), Jordaens and the Antique, exhibition catalogue, Brussels 2012, pp. 198-201).

This present panel is a new addition to Jacob Jordaens’ oeuvre, executed shortly after Jordaens became a free master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1615, having trained with his future father-in-law Adam Van Noort. At this time, Jordaens was working in the orbit of Peter Paul Rubens and assimilating the latter’s antique subjects vivid colouring, and sculptural dynamism, which greatly influenced his own early work. After Anthony van Dyck, Jordaens constitutes the third pillar of the triumvirate of the great Antwerp masters of the seventeenth century. Jordaens painted a second version of the present picture, a year or so later, with a major change in the head of Gryneus, the Lapith throwing the flaming altar onto the Centaurs Broteus and Orios. The second version is the same size but is executed on a canvas support (sold at Christie’s, London, 6 December 2018, lot 5, sold for £512,750, incl. premium).

The present composition loosely derives from a relief of the Battle of the Centaurs by Michelangelo, copied by Rubens in Italy. In the catalogue of the 2012 Jordaens and the Antique exhibition, where the canvas version was exhibited, Irene Schaudies noted that: ‘two of the principal figures in Jordaens’ Lapiths and Centaurs are indebted to other works by Rubens: the enraged, Herculean Lapith at the far left was directly inspired by the young hero in Rubens’s David Slaying Goliath…while the sprawling young Lapith with a firebrand seen head down in the centre ultimately goes back to Michelangelo’s Titus, which Rubens used for the dead Argus in his Juno and Argus of c. 1609-10 […]’ (see Schaudies, op. cit., note 1).

The panel support is constructed of three high quality Baltic oak planks. Dendrochronological dating indicates that the trees from which the planks were cut were felled between 1609 and 1618 (see A. Daly, Dendrochronological analysis of a panel painting of ‘The Battle of the Lapiths & Centaurs’, attributed to Jordaens, in a private collection, Dendro.dk report 32: 2016, kindly provided by the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project). Planks 1 and 2 are from the same tree. The Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs panel bears the clover leaf mark of the panel maker Michiel Claessens, who was active in Antwerp between his membership of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1590 until he stopped working as a panel maker some years before his death in 1637 (see P. Bakker, The Claessens Family – A Biographical Timeline, in: J. Davies (ed.) Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project, <www.jordaensvandyck.org/archive/claessens-family/> (accessed 15 March 2022)). The absence of a Guild mark (the hands and castle of the city of Antwerp) on the reverse of the panel indicates that it was made before the 11 December 1617 ordinance, which ordered that all panels had to be checked for quality and branded by the Dean of the panel makers within the Guild of Saint Luke (see J. Vander Auwera, Jacques Jordaens, his panels and panel makers: identifications and patterns, in: Jordaens Van Dyck Journal, 3, April 2021, pp. 54-71).

Given that there is a second, slightly later version of The Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, this primary version on panel was evidently retained by Jordaens. It ranks as one of his earliest cabinet and mythological paintings as a free master. As it is not recorded on the art market nor in any other collections during the seventeenth century, it is possible that it remained in Jordaens’ possession and house until his death in 1678. ‘The best pictures from his estate’ were sold by his heirs by public auction at the house of Anthoni Schaerders on the Friday market in Antwerp on 18 June 1687 but, unfortunately, none of the printed lists of pictures seem to have survived (see R-A. d’Hulst, Jacob Jordaens, London 1982, p. 328, no. 54).