Venus with Satyr and Cupid

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Venus with Satyr and Cupid
1635-1640
Jacob Jordaens

After Rubens and Van Dyck, Jordaens is the third great painter of Flemish Baroque art of the 17th c. He worked in Rubens's studio for more than twenty years (1620-1640) more as a competent associate than a pupil. The great effect Rubens had on him can be clearly seen in the monumentally conceived of Venus naked body and in the Baroque naturalism emanating from the scene. The forcefully agitated and colossally conceived female nude reveals the Baroque tendency to aexaggeration. The dominance of red coloration is typical of Jordaens's mature career, and since he ceased to paint half-length figures after 1640 this painting can be dated to the late 1630.