The Four Latin Church Fathers

This painting of the Four Latin Church Fathers, around 1620, by Jordaens, depicts Saints Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory—the foundational theologians of the Western Church. Such groups of Church Fathers decorated churches and libraries, symbolizing the intellectual foundations of Catholic doctrine. Jacob Jordaens, the most productive and commercially successful painter in Antwerp after Rubens's death in 1640, dominated Flemish painting through the middle decades of the seventeenth century. His mastery of large-scale multi-figure compositions, his ability to orchestrate warm golden light across complex scenes of festivity and narrative, and his characteristic combination of Flemish earthiness with Baroque compositional ambition made him the natural heir to Rubens's tradition in the Southern Netherlands. His enormous output served the aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and civic patrons who continued to commission ambitious paintings even as the Flemish economy contracted in the later seventeenth century.

The four scholars are differentiated through their distinctive vestments and attributes. Jordaens's robust handling gives each figure a monumental physical presence appropriate to their theological authority.