The satyr and the peasant (Göteborg)

This 1619 version of the Satyr and the Peasant, now in Gothenburg, is another early treatment of Jordaens' most frequently repeated subject. The fable's moral about duplicity and plain dealing resonated with the practical values of Flemish bourgeois culture, accounting for the subject's enduring popularity. 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 Gothenburg version shows Jordaens refining his treatment of the theme, with more confident handling of the candlelit interior and the contrasting expressions of the human and mythological figures.