Moses and the ten commandments, the fig tree, and the widow

The King Drinks (The Feast of the Bean King), another of Jordaens's frequently repeated subjects, celebrates the Flemish tradition of the Twelfth Night feast when a hidden bean in the cake determines the evening's mock-king. The scene of boisterous festivity — raised glasses, laughing faces, a baby being nursed — is rendered with the exuberance of a painter who genuinely loved his subject. Jordaens's ability to orchestrate large groups of figures in warm domestic light without losing compositional clarity made him the natural successor to Rubens for large-scale genre commissions. The subject allowed him to paint the full range of Flemish society united in the democracy of seasonal pleasure, and the paintings' warmth and humor made them enormously popular.

The panel displays Mazzolino's characteristic compressed composition with vivid color, multiple narrative episodes, and the detailed rendering that characterizes his complex theological paintings.