Flemish master’s painting hung undiscovered on town hall wall for decades

The composition of the Holy Family was used by the artists in other paintings shown at the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

A precious painting by a Flemish master, older and rarer than other works by the same artist on display in New York and St Petersburg, hung unnoticed in a Belgian town hall for sixty years. 

The 400-year-old painting by Jacob Jordaens, who died in 1678, was always thought to be a copy or the work of one of the Flemish baroque painter’s students. 

It was donated to the local authorities in St Gilles, a district in Brussels, by a collector in 1915 and hung on the office wall of the Alderman in charge of town planning since the 1960s.

Art historian Constantin Pion discovered the “Holy Family” was genuine when he looked at the back of the painting and saw it was stamped with the emblem of the Control Commission of the City of Antwerp. 

Two hands are also engraved on the back of the painting, which is a sign of an Antwerp guild that was only used at a time when Jordaens had no apprentices, meaning it must be an original. The painting has been dated to around 1617-18.

“It is a particularly emotional moment to discover an original work by one of the greatest Baroque painters,” said Mr Pion, who said it was an important piece in the artist’s development. 

The same composition was used by Jordaens,in paintings exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. 

Jordeans was a contemporary of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, the other two leading baroque painters of the period. 

Analysis of the painted panel showed that van Dyck used wood from the same tree for several of his works. 

This suggested that a young Jordeans and van Dyck were working in Rubens’ studio at the same time, the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper reported. 

The discovery was made after an inventory of artwork in St Gilles’ ornate French neo-renaissance town hall. 

Before hanging in the town hall it was exhibited in a municipal museum but now, after restoration work is completed, it will be displayed in Brussels’ Royal Museum of Fine Arts.