Jacob Jordaens (19 May 1593 – 18 October 1678) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After
Peter Paul Rubens and
Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading
Flemish Baroque painter of his day. Unlike those contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their intellectual and courtly aspirations. In fact, except for a few short trips to locations in the
Low Countries, he remained in
Antwerp his entire life. As well as being a successful painter, he was a prominent designer of
tapestries. Like Rubens, Jordaens painted
altarpieces,
mythological, and
allegorical scenes, and after 1640—the year Rubens died—he was the most important painter in Antwerp for large-scale commissions and the status of his patrons increased in general. However, he is best known today for his numerous large genre scenes based on proverbs in the manner of his contemporary
Jan Brueghel the Elder, depicting
The King Drinks and
As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young. Jordaens' main artistic influences, besides Rubens and the Brueghel family, were northern Italian painters such as
Jacopo Bassano,
Paolo Veronese, and
Caravaggio.