The Burlington Magazine

Mauritshuis, The Hague, 8th February–20th May

On display in the Mauritshuis is an intimate selection of carefully chosen works by Roelant Savery (1576/78–1639), forty-three in total, of which twenty-four are works on paper and nineteen are paintings. The small number of exhibits signals by no means a weakness of the show. At present, a total of three hundred paintings and 250 drawings are attributed to Savery, and more works are constantly emerging from lesser-known collections and are appearing on the art market. However, Savery’s later paintings fall short of the artistic qualities displayed in his early period and at the peak of his career, which are the focus here. This selective presentation is therefore to be welcomed, in particular, since drawings constitute the core of the display. It is precisely in these that Savery’s sense of detail, his superb powers of observation and his discreet humour and imagination can be seen most clearly.

There have been several monographic exhibitions on Savery in the past: in 1954 at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent; in 1985–1986 at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne and the Centraal Museum, Utrecht; and, more recently, in 2010–11, a joint show at the National Gallery, Prague, and the Broelmuseum, Kortrijk.[1] Thus, there was sufficient material to build on in the Hague, and the succinct catalogue that accompanies the exhibition draws upon the earlier ones.[2] The Mauritshuis is a highly suitable venue, since its collections include three exceptional paintings by the artist, which represent the diversity of genres he worked with, from scenes of everyday life and still life to animal paintings: Peasants dancing outside a Bohemian inn (c.1610; cat. no.43), Vase with flowers in a stone niche (1615; no.13; Fig.4), and Orpheus charming the animals with his music (1627; no.20). The museum obtained the first two of these in 2002 and 2016 respectively, and the exhibition also celebrates these recent acquisitions.

Savery left his native Kortrijk (in western Flanders) as a child in 1580 together with his family.[3] They found refuge in the northern Netherlands, initially in Haarlem; then in c.1590 Savery moved with his older brother Jacob to Amsterdam. There he received an offer he could not refuse: Emperor Rudolf II (reg.1576–1612) wanted Savery to enter his service and move to Prague, where Rudolf ’s court resided. Rudolf II was inviting the best artists from all corners of the world to work for him, as well as renowned scientists from all known disciplines. Besides being interested in art and various intellectual subjects, the eccentric ruler was fascinated by nature, enchanted by mountains and picturesque landscapes, as well as a great admirer of flora and fauna. He had extensive menageries built in Prague, which included a lion’s enclosure and capacious aviaries. He also owned a large collection of curiosities and was a keen taxidermist, especially proud of one specimen in his collection – a dodo, native to the African island of Mauritius and today extinct. Savery proved a loyal servant of the emperor, and an extensive collection of drawings has survived from his Prague period. It includes views of Prague and the surrounding area as well as depictions of people at work, at leisure and at prayer, including one sheet that depicts Jews at prayer in a synagogue (1606/07; private collection; no.36). Although Savery prided himself on his creation of art observed ‘from life’ (naar het leven), the term did not necessarily indicate that an image was based on a living model or faithful to reality in the modern sense. For example, his View of Prague (Fig.5) and View of the Vltava river near Prague (1606/10; private collection; no.10) do not entirely reflect topographical reality. In View of Prague Savery exaggerated the hilly character of Prague and its surroundings, representing the city as a mountain town.[4]

The curator, Ariane van Suchtelen, has made effective use of all the curiosities with which Savery was confronted in the imperial city and the division of the exhibition into seven thematic sections accentuates the areas in which Savery excelled. The introduction is devoted to his work as a court artist and includes his Peasants dancing outside a Bohemian inn, which portrays picturesque corners of Prague, many of which still exist. On display is also the lesser-known painting Cattle market (c.1610; Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp; no.25), as well as a group of drawings and a painting depicting Hungarian riders on horseback (nos.38–40). A section devoted to everyday life is dominated by a small painting from the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, which depicts an elderly man at rest (no.37). His clothing does not indicate whether this is a Czech or a Netherlandish peasant; in the exhibition the painting is shown alongside paintings from around 1615, when Savery was living in the Netherlands – first in Haarlem, and then after the autumn of 1618 in Utrecht, where he remained until the end of his life. His engagement in Prague came to an end with the death of Emperor Rudolf II in 1612. Archival documents from 1613 demonstrate that, although the artist was listed as a court painter to the succeeding Emperor Matthias (who relocated his court back to Vienna), he no longer received a salary. So it is most likely that he left Prague for good in 1613.

A section of the exhibition entitled ‘Faithfully Rendered Landscapes’ focuses on paintings and drawings that resulted from Savery’s journey to Tyrol, where he was sent by Rudolf II in 1606–07, charged to capture the beauty of the alpine environment. The following section presents works in which Savery gave full vent to his imagination, depicting all kinds of animals, monsters and creatures. Savery’s Temptation of St Anthony (no.22; Fig.6) is presented to the public for the first time here. One of the demons tempting the saint sits atop a monster with the body of a lobster and the head of a dodo. The scene recalls Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The other exhibits in this section also show a world full of magic and enchantment; they include Stable interior with witches (1615; Rijksmuseum; no.26) and the Mauritshuis’s Orpheus charming the animals with his music, together with another version of the subject (1619; private collection; no.19). As something of a counterbalance to these wildly imaginative works are several of the artist’s floral still lifes, which reveal Savery as an early protagonist of this genre. Outstanding examples include the Vase with flowers in a stone niche (Fig.4) and a pair of paintings of flowers in a vase from the Centraal Museum (1603; no.12; and 1624; no.14). All these works illustrate Savery’s aptitude for faithful botanical and zoological representation, which he demonstrated from the very the outset of his career, thereby capturing the attention of Rudolf II.

This is also shown in the concluding part of the exhibition, which brings together a number of Savery’s animal portraits, including a drawing of an Asian elephant (c.1610 or 1628/29; Albertina Museum, Vienna; no.27) and The dodo and other birds (c.1630; Natural History Museum, London; no.21). This section of the exhibition is dominated by the painting Two horses and two grooms (1628; City Collection, Abby Kortrijk; no.24). The painting represents something of a mirror of his entire personality and artistic œuvre – it offers a peculiar, dreamlike harmony of fiction and reality, merging motifs ‘from life’ with his fantasy, all bathed in an azure blue sky. This is the fascinating, wondrous world in which Roelant Savery immersed himself.

[1] P. Eeckhout: exh. cat. Roelant Savery, Gand 1954; E. Mai, ed.: exh. cat.: Roelant Savery in seiner Zeit (1576–1639), Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum) and Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1985; reviewed by Joneath Spicer in this Magazine, 128 (1986), pp.166–68; O. Kotková, ed.: exh. cat. Roelandt Savery: A Painter in the Services of Emperor Rudolf II, Prague (National Gallery in Prague) 2010; reviewed by Andrew John Martin in this Magazine, 153 (2011), pp.348–49; and I. de Jaegere, ed.: exh. cat.: Roelandt Savery 1576/1639, Kortrijk (Broelmuseum), 2011.

[2] Catalogue: Roelant Savery’s Wondrous World. Edited by A. van Suchtelen. 160 pp. incl. 100 col. ills. (Uitgeverij Waanders, Zwolle, 2024), £35. ISBN 978–94–6262–522–8.

[3] See J. Müllenmeister: Roelant Savery: Die Gemälde mit kritischen Œuvrekatalog, Freren 1988, reviewed by An Zwollo in this Magazine, 132 (1990), pp.721–23.

[4] For Savery’s drawings, see J. Spicer: ‘The Drawings of Roelandt Savery’, unpublished PhD thesis (Yale University, 1979); idem: ‘Roelandt Savery’s drawings of Prague’, in Kotková, op. cit. (note 1), pp.85–101; and idem: ‘Roelandt Savery’s tekeningen van Praag’, in de Jaegere, op cit. (note 1), pp.77–87.

Roelant Savery’s Wondrous World

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