Self-Portrait with Parents, Brothers and Sisters

Painted around 1615, the work is regarded as an unusually mature achievement for Jordaens at roughly twenty-two years of age, demonstrating his early mastery of the Flemish Baroque portrait tradition. The composition draws on Peter Paul Rubens's altarpiece The Circumcision in the Chiesa di S. Ambrogio, Genoa, and is often paired with Jordaens's closely related Portrait of the Master with the Family of Adam van Noort (1616), now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Kassel, which depicts his teacher and father-in-law's household in a similar format.

The painting's provenance shaped its critical reception. Long held within the Jordaens family, it passed in the eighteenth century to the Duke of Portland and then to Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall, where George Vertue correctly identified it in 1722. After its 1779 sale to the Hermitage under Catherine II, it was misattributed to Adam van Noort, and the sitter's identities were only re-established in 1940 through Julius S. Held's article "Jordaens' Portraits of his Family" in The Art Bulletin, a study later expanded by Kristi Nelson in 1989.

The painting has been recognized as a significant early example of a family portrait genre in Flemish Baroque art, influencing later artists in their treatment of multi-figure domestic scenes. Its iconography, particularly the lute symbolizing harmony, the dog and grapevines representing marital fidelity, and the putti associated with deceased children, has been widely cited in scholarly analyses of 17th-century symbolic portraiture. The work's provenance through the Walpole collection and acquisition by the Hermitage Museum contributed to its early misattribution to Adam van Noort, a confusion later resolved in the 20th century, reinforcing its role in re-evaluations of Jordaens' artistic legacy.

Contemporary sources, including 19th- and 20th-century art historical literature, have underscored its importance as a rare large-scale group portrait by a Flemish master from the early 1600s, reflecting both technical mastery and complex symbolic narrative in a domestic context.

Created around 1615, this oil painting by Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens portrays the painter alongside his mother, father and siblings. The family is gathered in a single space, the adults clothed in dark, sumptuous garments while the children wear simpler attire. Above the group, winged angels hover, bearing a cross and a crown, lending a subtle religious overtone to the domestic scene.

The work functions as both a personal record and a symbolic statement. By placing himself among his relatives, Jordaens emphasizes familial bonds and lineage, while the inclusion of celestial figures suggests divine favor or protection over the household. The varied gazes, some directed upward, others downward, convey a contemplative atmosphere, hinting at humility and reverence within the family unit.