COPENHAGEN.- The exhibition marks the completion of a thirteen-month-long restoration of one of the most important works in the Museum – as well as in Jordaens’ oeuvre: the 279,5 x 467 cm. large painting The Tribute Money. Peter Finding the Silver Coin in the Mouth of the Fish (also called The Ferry Boat to Antwerp) from c. 1623. The thorough restoration has been carried out live in an open workshop. Visitors have been able to follow the small but visible steps day by day; the Museum’s conservators have also told about their work and what surprises lay hidden on and under the surface of the gigantic painting. During the process, the painting was joined by another work by Jordaens which underwent an almost corresponding treatment in the open workshop. This patient, which arrived from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is a smaller variation of the same theme. Both paintings have now assumed a central position in the present exhibition in practically the same magnificent state as when they left Jordaens’ workshop almost 400 years ago.

Secrets under the surface
An international interdisciplinary collaboration between art historians, conservators and scientists has laid the ground for this research. For example, x-ray photographs and infra-red studies of the paintings have revealed that large parts of the motif in the Rijksmuseum painting are repeated under the visible surface of the large Copenhagen version. This is an unexpected discovery, which completely reverses the chronology of the two versions of The Tribute Money. Chemical investigations of colour layers have definitively rebuffed the suspicion that some of the eight sections of canvas in all in the Copenhagen version may have been added by some other artist than Jordaens. Instead, these revelations give us the picture of an uncompromising artist who made his way doggedly and painstakingly towards perfection.

Jordaens from all sides
The exhibition “Jordaens. The Making of a Masterpiece” communicates the results of this new research and documents the working process of the artist. It also reveals his ambition to create a new expression by painting stories alive with a rich variety of feelings manifested by physical movement and facial expression. A carefully chosen selection of other paintings by Jordaens also reveals how he worked with a sort of catalogue of facial expressions, bodies and postures, which he repeated and perfected from picture to picture. And last but by no means least, there are a number of works in the exhibition by Jordaens’ contemporary colleagues Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snijders, throwing him into relief as one of the very finest Baroque artists.

The exhibition is the result of close collaboration with the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, where it will be shown from 13 March to 14 June 2009.