The four Latin fathers of the Church 

Jacob Jordaens painted 'The Four Latin Fathers of the Church' in Antwerp, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, sometime in the 17th century. This oil on canvas depicts Saint Jerome with his lion, along with the other Latin Church Fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, and Pope Gregory I, surrounded by cherubs and symbols of their sainthood. It's a clear demonstration of Counter-Reformation ideology, emphasizing the authority of the Church Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church. Painted in Antwerp, a major center of Catholic art and intellectual life, Jordaens’s work served as a visual reaffirmation of Catholic doctrine in the face of the Protestant Reformation. It draws on a rich visual vocabulary that had accumulated over centuries of Church history, with the robes and symbols serving as visible signs of institutional authority. To fully understand a painting like this, we need to look at the historical context, including the religious and political debates of the time, as well as the visual and symbolic traditions within which the artist was working.