Bust of Cleopatra

Entry

The Antwerp-born sculptor Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), who was active in The Hague from round 1721, was particularly celebrated for his funerary monuments, portraits, garden ornaments and architectural decoration. It is a less known fact that he also carved small-scale sculptures in boxwood and ivory. These two ivory busts of Lucretia and Cleopatra are fine examples of that work. The present head of Cleopatra is signed by the artist and dated 1732. Two years later Xavery completed the pendant representing Lucretia (BK-1970-37-B) whose head is facing the other way, and which is also signed and dated (1734). Thanks to a number of notations in old sales catalogues and inventories, Xavery is known to have carved more such fine ivory heads of historical, Biblical or mythological figures, including pairs comprising Joseph and Mary,⁴ Socrates and Seneca (1732),⁵ and Heraclitus and Democritus (1733). ⁶ The present whereabouts of these pairs are unknown.

Theuerkauff noted the similarity in the physiognomy of Lucretia and Cleopatra and that of the François du Quesnoy’s (1597-1643) female figures, of which the monumental Saint Susanna in the Santa Maria di Loreto in Rome, completed in 1633, is the best known example.⁷ During the rest of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth, classical facial features of this type continued to be popular and an adapted form also occurs in the ivory carvings of Matthieu van Beveren (1630-1690) and Francis van Bossuit (1635-1692). A few reliefs are known by the latter carver, inspired by the painter Guido Reni (1575-1642), with half-length figures of Lucretia and Cleopatra, and were made in various versions by Van Bossuit and followers.⁸ Engravings of these works are included in the widely distributed, illustrated oeuvre catalogue with the title Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet which was published in 1727, only a few years before Xavery carved the present busts.⁹ As regards the angle of the heads and the facial expressions, the busts in question bear striking similarities with Bossuit’s creations, which no doubt formed examples for Xavery. The only appreciable difference is that the mouth of Van Bossuit’s Lucretia is slightly open, whereas in Xavery’s version it is closed. Terracotta variants of both busts, bearing Xavery’s monogram, still exist.¹⁰ They may have served as models for the ivories, because, according to the inscribed year, he modelled the bust of Cleopatra in 1731 and of Lucretia in 1732, so prior to the ivories.

As individual subjects, Lucretia and Cleopatra occupied only a minor place in Dutch visual art and literature from the sixteenth century onwards. From the second half of the seventeenth century the two tragic heroines do occur, also as a pair, the foremost sculptural example being the set of garden sculptures by Rombout Verhulst (1624-1698) in the Prinsenhof (Delft).¹¹ Verhulst portrayed the women as each other’s opposites, with the virtuous spouse, Lucretia, emotionally conducting her act of despair occasioned by her violation by Sextus Tarquinius, and Cleopatra, the unchaste lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony performing her suicide with a degree of equanimity, as she feels everyone has abandoned her. Accordingly, like the laughing and weeping philosophers Heraclitus and Democritus, they represent two contrasting emotional states.¹²

However, Van Bossuit interchanged the traditional emotional states of the women and represented Cleopatra as the one in despair.¹³ Since Xavery took Van Bossuit’s interpretations as examples, he will have adopted this; assuming he was concerned with a specific identification. So, in that case, it is Lucretia (BK-1970-37-B) who is taking her life with head held high, while Cleopatra is affected by more pathos: head averted, eyes shut and mouth slightly open. Xavery probably gave Lucretia a closed mouth – unlike in Van Bossuit’s example – to heighten the contrast with Cleopatra, who is overcome by emotion.

The earliest known mention of Xavery’s busts is the auction catalogue of the collection of the Amsterdam collector Jan de Bosch which was sold in 1825. The recorded height of 9 p[alm] (hands) 4 d[uim] (inches) must have been an error caused by the introduction of the metric system in the Netherlands five years earlier. In fact, it should probably have been 9.4 centimetres, a measurement corresponding exactly with the heads, including the ivory pin with which they were fixed to the pedestal. The catalogue also notes that the present ‘palmwood [boxwood] pedestals’ were made by a certain Kampman. Perhaps this was the late-eighteenth century cabinetmaker J. Kampman.¹⁴ The glass domes under which the busts were displayed at that time are missing.

Later in the nineteenth century the heads were in the collection of Anna Louisa Agatha (‘Annewies’) van Loon-van Winter (1793-1877), who probably had inherited them from her father, the famous art collector Pieter van Winter (1745-1807). At a later stage, they might have been inherited by her grandson, Willem Hendrik van Loon (1855-1935), since the art historian Adolph Staring noted that this family member owned a number of ‘ivory figures’ by Xavery.¹⁵

The English firm Wedgwood introduced ceramic relief medallions around 1785 in which Cleopatra forms a pair with her lover Mark Antony.¹⁶ The striking similarities with Xavery’s rendering in Amsterdam with respect to the averted angle of Cleopatra’s head, her facial expression and the way her cloak is draped over her head, suggest that this was based on a design by Xavery.¹⁷

Bieke van der Mark, 2025