King Candaules of Lydia Showing his Wife to Gyges

Jordaens painted King Candaules of Lydia Showing his Wife to Gyges around 1646, depicting the legendary transgression narrated by Herodotus in which the Lydian king made his trusted guard witness his wife's beauty, ultimately bringing about his own destruction. The subject was unusual in painting and suggests a sophisticated patron with literary interests; it also gave Jordaens occasion to paint the female nude in a dramatically charged narrative context. By the mid-1640s Jordaens's style had softened slightly from his earlier roughness, the brushwork more fluid and the coloring richer. The picture reflects the continued demand among Antwerp's educated collectors for mythological and historical narratives with an element of psychological drama.

The nocturnal composition creates dramatic tension through the interplay of hidden gazes and candlelight. Jordaens' warm palette and bold figure types bring characteristic physicality to this scene of transgressive display.