Jacob Jardaens - David playing the harp

oil on canvas, 76×61 cm
Sandelin Museum, Saint-Omer, France

This unsigned Flemish painting, attributed to Jacob Jordaens (1593 - 1678), represents the young King David singing, accompanying himself on the harp.

His smooth face, his soft look, his thin lips and his beautiful curly hair give him an almost angelic allure, and evoke more his former loves with Jonathan than the bloody episode where he beheaded the giant Goliath, freeing his people from slavery of the Philistines and becoming king of the Hebrews.

If his features remain fine and soft, his mouth is surprisingly modern: we see in particular his tongue, and especially his teeth, extremely rare representations in the 17th century.

If Jacob Jordaens often draws his models from characters from the street or from popular scenes, on the contrary, his contemporary Sir Anthonis van Dyck shows a great preference for the luxury and refinement of English painting.
By this excess of realism, which in other circumstances would have been considered rude, it is possible that Jordaens mocks van Dyck, author around 1630 of the very solemn portrait of Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666), singer and composer in the service of Charles I, who served as a model for Jordaens to represent David.

The harp of David is richly decorated, adorned with sculptures and gilding. Compared to the depth of the sound box, the angle of the table seems to have been widened, suggesting a very imposing harp, commensurate with the power of a king. These details contrast with a modest outfit: a simple half-open shirt, reminding us that he was once a shepherd.

The harp, despite the expression consecrated instrument of the Gods, reveals its artisan origin, in the sense that it is produced by and for Man, hence this luxurious aspect. Man, on the other hand, cannot hide his modest mortal nature. The harp is here the device, whose signs of luxury give the illusion of eternity. Man is, on the contrary, the natural, the ephemeral, and as king as he is, he remains as perishable as the laurel of his crown.

The harpists will be surprised by David's position on his instrument: he holds his harp on the side, almost parallel to his torso. His left arm suggests an abnormally small size, accentuated by the robustness of his right arm. Instead of being one with his harp, as we are used to seeing in his performances, he does not seem very comfortable, rather embarrassed by this bulky machine. The direction of David and that of his harp are indeed quite opposite: he turns his gaze almost backward, towards the light, towards the Lord (top left in the background of the painting), while his instrument is turned towards darkness, at the front, towards mortals, towards the spectator.

The voice, a natural instrument, is directed towards the divine, sings the celestial praises, and the harp, a manufactured instrument, is directed towards men, seduces only mortals. A little more, and he would turn his back on his harp: the opposition is so strong that it would almost suggest a portrait in profile, while his bust is presented from the front. If it is easy to paint a musical instrument, it is more difficult to paint the voice, immaterial. Here, the larynx may be located in the center of the table, it is assumed that David sings more to the details of his mouth than to the properties that one would expect from the features of a face and the shape of a rib cage usually adopted by a singer at work.

Indeed, rather than the expression of a singer's face, his gaze betrays a certain submission to this celestial light, while the harp, by its inclination - in particular that of the strings, seems to dominate its listeners. His head, the spiritual, turns to God, and his fingers, the manual, only to men. What is more, David almost seems to be having a dialogue, Caravaggio's chiaroscuro technique accentuating his forehead and his spirit, which reinforces this impression of greatness, of king above ordinary people. David receives inspiration from the celestial light, and his harp appears to mediate between God and mortals.

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When one evokes the painting of King David with the harp, one immediately thinks of that, famous, of Rubens, as one thinks of Mozart for the fortieth. If van Dyck had been the assistant to the grand master of Antwerp between 1610 and 1614, Jordaens always remained a very close collaborator, from 1620 until his death in 1640. Jordaens will occupy besides the functions of first painter of Antwerp, the day after the death of his brother-in-law (Jordaens had married Rubens' sister in 1616).

It is not impossible that Jordaens' painting will pay homage to Rubens. Although only 16 years separate them, the candid and naked aspect of the young David de Jordaens bows before the wisdom of the beard and the nobility of the pageantry of the old man of Rubens. The two David heads in the same direction, but Rubens' harp remains strangely sober, without gilding, unlike that of Jordaens.

Both are incomplete, cut by the border of the table (which gives the impression that it is more a detail than a table). Rubens' neck is very modestly curved, while that of Jordaens throws abnormally, with ardor and vanity, thus confronting the two ages.

This very slender neck contrasts with the very plunging body. The combination of these two may not be trivial: the abutment, on which the fleur-de-lis appears, is indeed located approximately at the level of David's heart. The neck and the table are not presented according to the same axis. By successively hiding the two elements, it appears very clear that the table is directed 3/4 to the front of the table, and the neck 3/4 to the rear. According to the body of the instrument, the neck should indeed be much more turned towards the spectator. This work on perspective makes it very difficult to imagine the position of a column, even bent like a bardic harp, and even less a straight column, parallel to the strings.

Far from betraying a supposed lack of control of perspectives, this disposition obeys a certain balance of movements.

The left shoulder, the abutment, the abnormal curvature of the 4th right, the line of the left hand and the left thumb clearly indicate a circle in rotation, in an anticlockwise direction. The curvature of the neck, too, suggests a circle, less whole, but of the same direction, in a movement to the right of the table, on the side opposite to the light.

These two circles of the same diameter hold only in the right part of the table, and overlap symmetrically with the horizontal center line: one plunging down, the other running up the table.

The head is just as symmetrical, but this time on the vertical axis: on the right, his face is lit, and on the left, his hair is in the dark. The curvature of his forehead and that of the neck show a circle in the same direction as the previous ones.

We can finally without problem restore a large curve, descending from the forehead to the right elbow, then turning towards the arm, the fingers, and the left thumb, before disappearing towards the marquee. This new invisible line gives essential movement to the general architecture, perfectly fitting into Rubens' aesthetics.

The representation of musical scenes is always delicate, it immortalizes the moment. It is a challenge, for an art where space remains a priori frozen, and where all notions of temporal development seem abolished. Whether by a pupil or by Jordaens himself, the question of time is approached here by the work of movements, that is to say directions and perspectives, and makes his painting particularly lively.