Studies of the Head of Abraham Grapheus

Studies of the Head of Abraham Grapheus is a detailed study from life in oils on paper that clearly reveals Jacques Jordaens expert skills as a painter and very keen powers of observation. Abraham Grapheus here he is depicted aged about 65 years old was administrator of the St Lukes painters guild in Antwerp, an office we could compare with…

Studies of the Head of Abraham Grapheus is a detailed study from life in oils on paper that clearly reveals Jacques Jordaens expert skills as a painter and very keen powers of observation. Abraham Grapheus here he is depicted aged about 65 years old was administrator of the St Lukes painters guild in Antwerp, an office we could compare with that of a secretary of a society today. A number of Jordaens contemporaries, including Cornelis de Vos and Anthony van Dyck, used Grapheus as a model. Jordaens later used the head on the left of the study for one of his Four Evangelists, a painting that is now in the Louvre in Paris. We recognise the head on the right as one of the satyrs in his Allegory of Fertility in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the theme of which is linked to a painting of the same name in the museum in Ghent.