Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple

Driving the traders from the temple

The episode has Christ enter the temple precinct, overturn the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling animals, and drive them out. John places it at the beginning of the ministry; the three synoptic gospels place it in the last week, after the entry into Jerusalem. It is the only episode in the cycle in which Christ acts with physical force, and painting has always used it that way: a scene of scattering.

Where it falls in the cycle

Its position depends on which gospel is being followed, which is unusual in a narrative that is otherwise fixed. Read with the synoptics, it stands days before the arrest and is one of the acts that provokes it. Read with John, it opens the ministry as a declaration.

The catalogue entry

The record gives Jacob Jordaens as the artist and 1650 as the date, with the canvas in the Louvre, Paris. The dimensions are the largest among the works gathered here: 288 by 436 centimetres, a broad horizontal wall painting rather than an easel picture. The style is classed as Baroque and the artist as Flemish; the subject fields include animal art alongside the religious classifications, which is consistent with an episode the gospels set among sellers of livestock. The measured palette reads as brown.